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Places where regular ppl are bilingual? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 17 08 May 2009 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was just chatting to a friend of mine here in London who is from the Alsace region in France. Although French is her native tongue, she speaks German like a native too.
Chatting to her while being logged on to this site made me think that her situation could be considered enviable. In what other parts of Europe and the world are regular people more or less bilingual? Is this generally a good thing or are there any disadvantages? Do people always have a stronger language, or can they be 100% bilingual with no preference? Here are the areas or larger cities that I can think of where REGULAR people, (not academics) tend to be bilingual. Correct me if you think I am wrong, or add to the list! 1) Brussels (Dutch/French) 2) West coast of Finland (Swedish/Finnish) 3) The Basques and Catalan in Spain 4) Bern, CH and some other places in Switzerland, I think. (German/French) 5) The Ukraine (Ukrainian/Russian) 6) Riga in Latvia, I think. (Latvian/Russian) 7) Singapore (Chinese/English) 8) French Canadians (French/English) 9) Places like Tunis in North Africa (??) (Arabic/French) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6300 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 2 of 17 08 May 2009 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1. Taiwan - Mandarin/Taiwanese or Mandarin/Hakka or Mandarin/Hakka/Taiwanese
2. Lots of places in China - Mandarin/Local "dialect" 3. Malaysia - Malay/English or (Mandarin and/or Chinese dialect + English + Malay) 4. Indonesia - Indonesian/(insert local language here) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5807 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1 | Message 3 of 17 08 May 2009 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Western Ireland, Irish/English
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| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6146 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 4 of 17 08 May 2009 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think bi/multilingualism is the norm in the world. China, India, Indonesia,
Pakistan, S-E Asia, Africa, the US (how many speak a different language at home?)- that's most of the world's population, I think, where speaking more than one language is normal. Monolingual Standard Thai/Lao/Burmese/Khmer speakers are quite rare, most will speak at least a closely related language at home. Africa is similar, virtually everyone will speak some kind of lingua franca, whether a European language (French, English etc), or African/Arabic (Swahili, Hausa etc), and use a variety of other languages in different parts of everyday life. Pakistan is another example, everyone speaks Urdu but only a very small minority (Mohajirs) are monolingual. Everyone else speaks Punjabi (Mirpuri, Potwari etc), Sindhi, Pashto or Balochi at home. India is similar, although there is a larger proportion of monolingual speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 5 of 17 08 May 2009 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Kazakhstan, most Kazakhs are bilingual in Kazakh and Russian. The levels of each depend on age and country - some of the younger Kazakhs in big cities don't know Kazakh very well and just use Russian to communicate, while in smaller towns with smaller Russian populations Kazakh is the dominant language. This is true in most of the other former Soviet republics as well, like Uzbekistan (Uzbek/Russian), Tajikistan (Tajik/Uzbek/Persian/Russian), Turkmenistan (Turkmen/Russian), Azerbaijan, etc.
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| Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5788 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 6 of 17 08 May 2009 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Amsterdam even the homeless speak perfect English.
With Brussels....its not so bilingual. I know a few people from Brussels and they speak quite awful Dutch. Their English is better.
Only in the dream's of 'Irish'-Americans. Only in very small areas is this the case. A tiny percentage f the population. Better is western Wales but even there its not 100% Edited by Tyr on 08 May 2009 at 2:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5807 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1 | Message 7 of 17 08 May 2009 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not an Irish American. Good try though. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Cainteoir í_Gaeilge_- _Irish_Speakers.svg I'm also pretty sure homeless people in Amsterdam don't speak perfect English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 17 08 May 2009 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Other possibilities are:
Israel: Hebrew + Arabic (think Arab-Israelis) Slovakia: Czech + Slovak or Slovak + Hungarian (or sometimes all three) Romania (usually in Transylvania among Hungarians, Szeklers or Csangos): Hungarian + Romanian Former Yugoslavia: Serbo-Croatian (one of BCMS) + one of Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian or Slovenian (function of whether the speaker lives near the border of Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia or Slovenia respectively) Latin America outside Brazil: Spanish + local minority language (e.g. Mapudungun in Chile; Nahuatl in Mexico; Guaraní in Paraguay) Brazil: Portuguese + local minority language (e.g. Kaingang) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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