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Is where you live "multicultural"? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4527 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 25 of 37 04 September 2012 at 4:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Ohhh yeah, I have one friend from Montreal and she's told me lots about it. I bet Montreal is as multicultural a place as you can find. I think that's one of the best things about Canada. It's not a melting pot, where everyone assimilates into one identity, but rather a colourful mural where every culture, every person has a place. :) Edited by ZombieKing on 04 September 2012 at 4:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 26 of 37 04 September 2012 at 4:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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I tend to think of my city with its large Hispanic population as just bicultural, with me living in the English-
speaking part. And yet, my older daughter is friends with a girl from a Dutch family down the street, who was born in the US, but has been raised bilingual since they only speak Dutch at home. I also borrowed a few Geman DVD's from the German mom of my younger daughter's classmate. Based on that, she started speaking German to my wife when she ran into her at the supermarket. These are hardly the only nationalities one runs into at my daughters' schools even though the overall impression would be that this part of town is mostly just white Americans. I suspect it's easy to underestimate the diversity of the place one lives in, especially in a country like the US. This was further driven home recently by a Somali cab driver who had lived from 1992 to 1997 in Moscow, and who spoke completely broken Russian, but understood it surprisingly well. He has apparently lived for 10 years in the US now, but speaks English that is about as broken as his Russian. How's that for multicultural. And as I write this, I realize that we have a number of Somali refugees living in our city, so it's actually a community. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 27 of 37 04 September 2012 at 7:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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OK, so I asked my older daughter to list the languages spoken at home among her High School classmates. She listed: Urdu, French, Hungarian, Finnish, Polish, German, Portuguese, Farsi, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Serbian. She further listed several languages spoken by parents at home that the kids may possibly understand, but she wasn't sure could also speak. Those were: Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Norwegian, Ethiopian. Many of those languages are unlikely to have significant communities in town, but may still have a sprinkling of speakers.
So, a place may not be overwhelmingly multicultural the way major metropolitan centers are, but still have a bit of variety to it here and there, which makes me wonder if some people don't despair too easily of the supposed lack of multiculturalism in their communities. Edited by frenkeld on 04 September 2012 at 6:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4859 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 28 of 37 04 September 2012 at 9:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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My 'borntown' has a significant Ukrainian minority. Unfortunately, you see Ukrainians mostly at a market there (and they usually live in Ukraine, not in Poland) and you barely have a contact with there. Thus, there's no real chance to be bilingual (unfortunately).
If it comes to the city I currently live in, Cracow, it IS considered multicultural-friendly; however, I wouldn't say it's a real, multicutural metropolis. Of course, there are many Ukrainians, Belorussians, some Italians, Britons, Turks etc., but it's definitely not London or Amsterdam ;) Nevertheless, there are lots of tourists. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5083 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 29 of 37 04 September 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't want to be pedantic, but I couldn't resist pointing out that Ethiopian isn't a language anymore than "Indian", "Kenyan" or "Jewish" is. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6620 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 30 of 37 04 September 2012 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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I live in a fairly small town by international standards though I suppose it isn't so bad by Norwegian standards. There are quite a lot of foreigners around here. Off hand, I know there are people from Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, China, Thailand, India, Russia, Poland, USA, Philippines and probably lots of others living in this town. I live in the "immigrant district," but I'm not really good at getting to know people, so I don't really don't know more than a handful of people foreign or Norwegian. In terms of language study, I wouldn't find anyone to chat with anyway since there are exactly 0 Japanese here. I suppose I could pick up a new language, but I want to work more at Japanese first.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 31 of 37 04 September 2012 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
By all means, be pedantic, I'd rather not make this mistake more than once in my life. I had assumed for some reason that Ethiopia had a majority language, but as it doesn't, one certainly can't speak of Ethiopian. In fact, I was too lazy to write "one or more Indian language" in my post, but my daughter does have a few classmates from India, without being clear on what languages they speak. Edited by frenkeld on 04 September 2012 at 4:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5178 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 32 of 37 05 September 2012 at 2:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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If I look at 'level up' of Moses the Mouse I can see that if you live in Western Country you can practice any language you like.
but in Poland, it's more complicated - not many people come, we are not yet as rich, and we speak a non popular language (spoken officialy only in one country), therefore not many foreigners. SO unfortunetely I couln'd practice a lot. There are some Vietnamese restaurants, but I don't see Asians hangind aroung the street. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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