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Multi-lingual areas? | ||
Tags: Living abroad | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Saif Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5612 days ago 122 posts - 208 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French | Message 9 of 22 12 April 2010 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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How about Beirut, Lebanon? You can learn Arabic, French, English, and Armenian.
Miami, Florida -- English and Spanish widely spoken. Plus there's other sizable communities in the Miami area (Haitians, Brazilians, Russians, Italians, Arabs...). About 75% of Miami residents speak a language other than English as their first language. Singapore is an interesting place for language learners. Opportunities to learn English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil which are official languages there. Some Hindi and Arabic speakers there too. Agreed with the NYC choice. Here's a data table. http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/chapter01_files/sheet011. htm Speaks only English 3,920,751 Spanish or Spanish Creole 1,832,448 Indo-European languages: French (incl. Patois, Cajun) 105,821 French Creole 89,039 Italian ; 139,536 Portuguese or Portuguese Creole &n bsp;18,369 German 33,066 &n bsp; Yiddish ; 82,732 Other West Germanic Languages 4,825 Scandinavian Languages 5,708 Greek 58,343 Russian 194,602 Polish 60,604 &n bsp; Serbo-Croatian 19,895 Other Slavic Languages 16,631 Armenian &nbs p; 4,922 Persian 12,397 Gujarathi &nb sp; 9,377 Hindi 25,015 Urdu 38,489 Other Indic Languages 79,154 Other Indo-European Languages 45,257 Asian and Pacific Island languages: Chinese 323,529 Japanese 20,502 Korean 77,120 Mon-Khmer, Cambodian 1,976 Miao, Hmong 4& nbsp; Thai 4,250 Laotian 157 Vietnamese 10,085 Other Asian Languages 26,912 Tagalog 45,767 Other Pacific Island Languages 4,445 Other languages: Navajo 18 Other Native North American languages 1,081 Hungarian 11,308 Arabic 48,981 Hebrew 50,263 African languages 44,915 Other and unspecified languages 4,465 Edited by Saif on 12 April 2010 at 11:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Valicore Hexaglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5344 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, Italian Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 10 of 22 12 April 2010 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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The border between France and Spain has areas where you can learn Catalan, Occitan,
Spanish, and French, or Basque, Spanish, and French. It's a pretty interesting linguistic mash there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Nick_dm Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5713 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese | Message 11 of 22 12 April 2010 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think Malaysia would be a great place to live for learning Asian languages. In the major cities there are as many
Chinese people as Malays and there is also a sizeable Indian community. English is widely used as a lingua franca. Malay is the national language and used for official purposes (government and the state media) but other languages are widely used. For example when I was in Kuala Lumpur I found: - A major bookshop stocking roughly equal numbers of books in Chinese, Malay and English. - A single TV station broadcasting shows in both Mandarin and Hokkien, with the news in Malay (with Chinese subtitles). The commercials were mainly in Mandarin but some used Cantonese, Malay or English. - Radio stations broadcasting in Mandarin and Cantonese - Chinese-language pop stars doing promotional events in shopping malls I don't know as much about the situation with the Indian languages, but since Indians make up 10% of the population (in Kuala Lumpur) I would imagine that they also have TV and radio stations as well as bookshops and newspapers. Edited by Nick_dm on 12 April 2010 at 11:11pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5904 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 12 of 22 13 April 2010 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Basically anywhere in Sub Saharan Africa... Usually colonial languages such as French,
German, Portuguese and English are used as Lingua Francas interregional, and on regional levels Pidgins such as Fanak, etc. and also bigger native languages such as Lingala, Swahili, Hause, etc. But on the ground... yeah I speak 4 languages every day in Cape Town, and in my friends circle it's about 15 languages easily if I count them all... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5495 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 13 of 22 13 April 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, the best region would be Southern France. You can learn French of course,
and I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find willing Occitan speakers either. In just a few hours of driving, one could immerse himself in Italian, or in the opposite direction, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, but with a little added distance, German and Portuguese are less than a day's drive away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clang Groupie United States Joined 5339 days ago 54 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 14 of 22 13 April 2010 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Moldova! You can speak Romanian and Russian in almost every town or village in the country and can find tutors
for very cheap. There are also Gagauzian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and Romani (not Romanian) villages throughout the country. You could easily speak both of the first two and any one of the other three every single day. As someone mentioned earlier, I'm sure many other former Soviet republics have similar bi and trilingual areas. I've focused on Russian for the first 10 months and have picked up a ton of Romanian just from hanging around Romanian speakers. I've even learned a few words of Gagauzian (which is quite similar to Turkish) practically through osmosis. It's been very interesting here, for sure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5371 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 15 of 22 13 April 2010 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is Ireland of course.You have English and in the extreme west of Ireland
you have Irish(Gaelic)too.I know several Spanish students were were staying in the west of Ireland,not only they learned English,but in addition they picked up some knowledge of Irish(Gaelic)as well as English. There is Brussels,the Belgian capital.It's complusory to learn French and in addition it's very useful to learn Flemish(Dutch).Since the outskirts of Brussels is mainly Flemish speaking in contrast to central Brussels which mainly French-speaking. Also you have Switzerland,in several cantons like Berne,Fribourg and the Valais,it's essential that you learn French and Swiss German too. Finally there is the Netherlands.It's now very popular as a destination for Poles and other Eastern Europeans since the work in Ireland and the UK has dried up.Obviously the Netherlands is popular for the Eastern Europeans,because they know most Dutch people speak excellent English and the wages are pretty good.Not only the Eastern Europeans can continue learning their English,they can pick up some knowledge of Dutch too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5371 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 22 13 April 2010 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful |
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