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International Cities. Best languages. | ||
Tags: Surroundings | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Thor1987 Groupie Canada Joined 4735 days ago 65 posts - 84 votes  Studies: German | Message 17 of 25 06 April 2013 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
examples like mumbai, where the languages spoken are not truly foreign languages. I would never consider french as a foreign language in toronto as part of any other statistic. Toronto has over 10 languages that are spoken by atleast 1 percent of the population each that can be done without grouping subdialects separately like hindi/urdu, or different varieties of chinese. The places that come to mind are dubai, Singapore, and maybe london. New york, and Los Angeles are often mentioned, but I'd yet to see any stats with spanish subtracted. Edited by Thor1987 on 06 April 2013 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 18 of 25 06 April 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I get it from observation in these places. What works in London's favor (and to a certain extent in New York's) is that it's not only the relatively high population in city limits (about 8 million each for London and New York versus about 3 million for Toronto) but also location. Canada by comparison is small potatoes and faraway. If you live in Europe, Africa or western Asia, it's easier to reach London than anywhere in North America. This also means that you're more likely to have outsiders milling about or visiting (in addition to working). It's a matter of numbers. By no means should this be construed that I think Toronto consists only of provincial monoglots, but in comparison to the cities that I've mentioned, Toronto runs behind.
With all due respect about statistics on this topic, it was precisely statistics (from the UN to boot) that led to the (mis)interpretation of Toronto being the most multicultural city in the world as that link that I mentioned earlier states.
In a related way, statistics about languages used as home aren't as meaningful as one could think because Toronto (like New York and London) exists in a strongly Anglocentric area, and different ethnic groups will use a common language (usually English) with each other. To be able to take advantage of a place's multilingual nature (especially as a learner of a foreign language), one needs to establish regular contact with native speakers of that community, but this doesn't happen as much as it could. For example, it's great that the Chinatowns in these large cities provide opportunities to use Mandarin or Cantonese but outside business transactions, I'd be surprised if an outsider could turn using basic phrases with a Chinese shopkeeper into deeper involvement with other Chinese thus giving a rather better immersion situation for learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5905 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 19 of 25 08 April 2013 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would say Cape Town or Johannesburg... Both have a myriad of indigenous languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, etc.) though Johannesburg more diverse than Cape Town... But there are large groups of French and Dutch speakers, as well as German speakers...
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| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6869 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 20 of 25 08 April 2013 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I understand Berlin is fairly diverse in terms of expats who move there.
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| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5372 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 21 of 25 11 April 2013 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I understand that Brussels and Amsterdam are reasonably diverse cities.
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 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 25 11 April 2013 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would assume that Berlin is an international city with lots of foreign residents and lots of international tourists visiting the capital of Germany.
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 23 of 25 11 April 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think Frankfurt is more international than Berlin (with 50% of its inhabitants having ''foreign'' blood, and is the city with the highest % of Indians in Germany).
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| AlexMoby Diglot Newbie FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4313 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch | Message 24 of 25 11 April 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have heard that Amsterdam is a city with more than 45 nationalities.
Certainly one of the most multilingual capital cities in Europe. Edited by AlexMoby on 11 April 2013 at 7:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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