Really curious about how you came to that conclusion. You don't exactly see a lot of multilingualism in most developed countries, where people are also most likely to consume content in their own language, or don't have too much economic pressure to learn other languages. Stable borders and a working education system where people learn a foreign language for a few years without using it much later might not necessarily lead to a high language proficieny.
People generally learn English as a second language early in school in non-anglophone developed countries, and put it to use right away. That's the #1 language for web content, games, movies/youtube, music etc. Also lets you access jobs and education ouside your own country.
My interpretation was that these new Web users are likely to come from ethnic groups whose native languages are not much used online and whose educations might not have prepared them very well for content in the foreign languages (foreign to them) that are commonly used online.
I'm not sure why you would say that. Here in Europe most people, even the working class, have some understanding of multiple languages.
Here in the german speaking part of switzerland most people, even the grocery store clerk, speak english as well as german. And when you get into the middle class many speak three or more languages (english, german, french, etc).
"I'm not sure why you would say that. Here in Europe most people, even the working class, have some understanding of multiple languages."
Sorry, but this is just not true for "Europe" in general.
If you go to Italy, France, Spain (large countries with their own languages where basically all media is transalted/dubbed) you will will find out that also many people with higher education rarely go beyond very basic English (and, btw, I'm Italian, live in Spain and deal with French customers).
This is probably different in Germany, Austria, Switzterland, Nordic countries... the fact is that "Europe" is still made up of many different countries, it's very hard to speak in general.
I would put Germany in the "largely monolingual" block (they also dub their movies, perhaps uncoincidentally). In my experience they have nowhere near the level of multilingualism as Switzerland or the Nordic countries. You can go to any random Danish town and speak English, and it's a requirement for many jobs that you be fluent in both Danish and English, with extra points for speaking a third language (e.g. everyone in the civil service, hospitals, etc. is multilingual). But in most of Germany people are functionally monolingual, at least when it comes to conversations. They may have studied French or English in school, but they cannot carry on a conversation in those languages. The main exception is educated professionals in major cities. And even among those it's spotty: many doctors in hospitals cannot effectively communicate with patients in any language but German, and the civil service almost never can. Younger people are more likely to be at least bilingual, though; a 30-year-old doctor is more likely to speak English than a 50-year-old one.
Not in my experience, it's actually more likely that they will speak some measure of English (which tends to be by far the most common foreign language taught in school), rather than another latin-derived language.
The fact that it's easier to learn another romance language for some people, it doesn't mean that they have any motivation to do so, while the benefits of learning English are obvious.
They don't in Spain. They might be able to read it (just about), and given a week or two on holiday they might be able to understand a fair bit... but fluently? No.
There was a recent article (I forget if it was in Spanish or Portuguese) that said the Spanish have higher fluency than Portuguese when it comes to English. Living in Portugal, having traveled in Spain, and having Spanish friends, we all had a lil' laugh at that. Of all the Portuguese people I've met living here, only two weren't fluent in English (one was an old man, the other was conversational).
Only two non-fluent? Really? I think you were either extremely lucky or have a rather low bar for "fluency". I'm Portuguese, and a software developer, and yet I know barely anyone I'd consider fluent (myself included) - especially when it comes to the 50+ demography, since at the time it was common to have French classes instead of English.
That said, we do have a better accent than the Spanish, probably thanks to watching TV shows and films subtitled instead of dubbed. Watching TV in Spain is painful :|
I'd like to think my bar is pretty normal, but I admit my friends and acquantances are late 20s/early 30s, live in Lisbon, and have pretty frequent interactions with foreigners.
For example, though, I'd consider you fluent, based on your comment.
Yeah, but that's not exactly common for the average citizen. At least, they don't interact with tourists or students, who are more likely to speak English, but with immigrants, who are _usually_ even less fluent.
For example, though, I'd consider you fluent, based on your comment.
Well, in writing, sure. But then I open my mouth :)
>
I think that you're thinking of the UK - very few people there are bilingual.
Where "not many" means 40% of the population, and ignores the fact that languages must be taught to school children under the national curriculum. EDIT {Obviously not all of those children will become fluent in those languages; they're not counted in the stats I quote. the point is that foreign language learning is compulsory for English state school children and not for American state school children}
We (Brits) all get taught another language in school. I'd say very few get fluent or even attempt to use it when abroad.
I think this quote by PG Wodehouse sums it up:
“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”
Curriculum standards vary widely across the US, but it's very common to require some foreign language learning. Only a few states (mostly midwestern) have no requirement, but even there it's basically required for college application.
It is true, however, that it very rarely sticks. The reason is twofold:
1) It's poorly taught: usually only two years is required, and usually in high school (which is too late for really learning a language well) and usually via text books.
2) There's almost no need and little opportunity for most people in the US to use a foreign language. Even if a non-English language is successfully taught, it'll atrophy quickly. Unless you're a member of an ethnic sub-community, the only body of non-English speakers less than several thousands of dollars and an ocean away is Spanish--which is why you find most bilingual people in the south and southwest. But even in Texas it's quite easy to get along without a lick of Spanish.
Even if the government insisted you become fluent in some language in school, and they did it well and thoroughly, the eventual numbers of bilingualism would be about the same due to the linguistic landscape. You don't walk around with umbrellas in the desert.
I grew up here and was taught German and French (at least at an incredibly basic level) at school but I would by no means class myself as bilingual! I struggle even going on holiday to France!
Of my colleagues, hardly any remember any French or German from school, despite it being taught. I think there is a large gulf between being taught it at school and classing as bilingual.
Who knows what "some US schools" do, but every school I have ever been involved with for 30 years does. You're required to take a foreign language in high school. Most people pick Spanish. I unwisely took 4 years of German, which I have never used, outside of watching WWII movies. Not the best use of my time, in retrospect, but oh well.
Don't believe every bad thing people tell you about US schools.
Perhaps you could post a link to the regulations requiring all school student to have foreign language teaching? I posted the English national curriculum above.
I'm unable to find any such requirement for US schools. "Many" does not mean "all".
But as well as the lack of a requirement for US schools to teach a foreign language we see that US children do worse than Asian or EU children.
> Foreign language programs are often one of the first items to be scrutinized and cut when elementary, middle, and high schools in the U.S. face poor performance evaluations or budget crunches.
> Caccavale: Although parents may not be able to get a foreign language program instituted at their child's school in the immediate future, they can help to do so in the long run.
> The center’s most recent report shows a decrease in the last decade in school language programs, which Rhodes says can be attributed to “budget cuts, and foreign languages are among the first things that get cut.
> America has never placed a premium on teaching foreign languages. Less than one-third of American elementary schools offer foreign language courses, and less than half of all middle and high school students are enrolled in such classes, the majority studying Spanish.
> When elementary and secondary schools and colleges around the country open for the fall semester, millions of students will not be studying a foreign language. Not necessarily for lack of interest. They won’t be able to.
> at public K-12 schools, course enrollment in 2007-2008 reached 8.9 million individuals, about 18.5 percent of all students;
Most damning:
>. - The percentage of public and private elementary schools offering foreign language instruction decreased from 31 to 25 percent from 1997 to 2008. Instruction in public elementary schools dropped from 24 percent to 15 percent, with rural districts hit the hardest.
>. - The percentage of all middle schools offering foreign language instruction decreased from 75 to 58 percent.
>. - The percentage of high schools offering some foreign language courses remained about the same, at 91 percent.
Yes, of course there are, in any country which has some measure of immigration, people which will speak their original language, in addition to the language of the country they moved in.
Just as well, the people of some region of the same country with a different language than the national one, will likely speak both (Wales, Catalunya...)
But in this case I would say that multilinguism is a side effect for those groups, not something that is part of the country itself.
Uniquely? Get outside the tourist/business zones of China, SE Asia, England, France, Brazil and many other countries and regions and you won't find many grocery store clerks who can speak a language other than their mother tongue.
Certainly, Swiss (and the citizens of certain other countries) have very good language skills, but that's often tied to educational systems, colonial legacies, and large populations of people living nearby who speak other languages.
> , but that's often tied to educational systems, colonial legacies, and large populations of people living nearby who speak other languages.
"but", what? Of course there are reasons for them being multi-lingual; it's not simply that they are culturally or genetically predisposed to learning languages for the sake of it. That doesn't undermine the point that they are multi-lingual.
I tend to think that the most important sign of whether somebody knows another language is more likely to be how long you would have to travel to get somewhere with a different native language. I don't know about the US being /uniquely/ mono-lingual, but depending on exactly where you live, you may have to drive for days or take a relatively long and expensive flight to get to the nearest country with a different language - Mexico. And so you naturally find that relatively few Americans speak other languages, and Spanish is the most common.
It might be more accurate to say that Europe is unique in being highly poly-lingual, which I think is mostly due to so many countries with different languages in close proximity, all with easy border crossings and good transportation infrastructure. Many Europeans could probably get somewhere that speaks a different language in hours, by car, train, or plane. I don't think that it makes them particularly special, though.
Agreed. He should make a visit about 500 km up North to Germany and in an average sized German town try to stay for a while speaking only English. It's close to impossible. Same for France or Spain.
Spain is another country with several languages; Spanish, Galician, Basque, Catalan. Those who speak the minority languages would presumably need to also speak Spanish if they want to be able to live and function beyond their own regions with a dense number of minority speakers. Catalan in addition to Spanish might be useful if you live in Barcelona, and probably even more so if you plan on staying in Catalonia outside of Barcelona.
The Spanish aren't good at English (in my experience), but it is another example of a non-monolingual country, like Switzerland.
Well, to be honest, in the context of the Internet (the original topic of conversation, now slightly forgotten), "foreign language" = English. If you want to unlock 80% of the content on Internet, Spanish + Catalan won't take you very far.
Oh give it a rest! You were replying and agreeing with someone who said that Switzerland, with four official languages (none of which are English) is a special case. Clearly the discussion in this sub-thread was about knowing multiple languages in general, not just knowing your mother tongue and English in addition to that.
And his reply was to someone who was talking about countries in Europe in which they speak multiple languages (yes, not just "mother tongue + English").
How exactly did we come from "The sets of problems might differ vastly from the rich people's problems" basically talking about 3rd world without calling them 3rd world, to Switzerland of all places? Not exactly the poorest of 3rd world nations.
When I took high school spanish, the spanish teacher was more along the lines of multiculturalism than grammar and vocabulary. I still learned how to ask for a beer, but we spent a substantial amount of time on cultural issues, so we would actually have something to talk about. Anyway I remember that Ecuador, for example, has a way higher mono-lingual percentage than the USA, and generally speaking the USA is more multi-lingual than the entire continent of south america (if you demand a local enough small geographic anecdote, then you can find cultural border zones where 100% of the population speak Spanish and Portuguese, but that doesn't really mean anything on a large scale, like "USA" size scale)
As for other 3rd world locales, I do know that people from India generally can't talk to each other unless they're from the same general area or happen to share a language (like English). This is often portrayed as a strength, although I have no idea why. I think its a classic macro/micro confusion where multiple languages is always a strength on a micro/individual scale and always a disaster on a macro country sized scale.
What I'm getting at is imagine how much better Swiss bankers could do their work if they only had to waste time learning one language, although any individual banker with an unusual language skill has an automatic benefit over any individual who doesn't know an unusual language.
I like to say that a native speaker of English that has actually bothered to learn a significant fraction of vocabulary is at least sesquilingual.
English has filched so many words from so many other languages, and has such a large corpus of written literature, that any anglophone wanting to learn more language than he already knows could simply learn more English.
As a result, people who speak English as their first language are probably less likely to pick up another unless they have a specific need or interest in doing so. Plenty of Americans learn Spanish as their second language simply because America has a large Hispanic population.
I had the choice between French or Spanish in high school language classes. Outside of school, my Jewish friends learned some modern Hebrew in Saturday school, I learned some German from a German-American heritage society. And for some reason, my family says the Polish-origin word dupa instead of "ass".
This is why the US is not "monolingual". We simply have so many immigrant languages that the one most open to adopting foreign words (and beating them mercilessly with a rolled-up newspaper) is the one that everybody speaks. It is difficult to learn, because it has been frequently remodeled by both exploration and conquest, becoming like Frankenstein's chimera. Or perhaps it is like Wendigo, swallowing up other languages, only to become larger and hungrier.
It's almost amusing to see the Academie Francaise try to hold off the onslaught unleashed by the Internet by coining new words like courriel and logiciel. Meanwhile, the OED just throws twerk and selfie right into the seething breeding pit that is English vocabulary.
As someone who is currently living in the german part of Switzerland(Zurich) I concur. I am also amazed by how most swiss people speak at least two languages and often three(german, english and french/italian).
Really curious about how you came to that conclusion. You don't exactly see a lot of multilingualism in most developed countries, where people are also most likely to consume content in their own language, or don't have too much economic pressure to learn other languages. Stable borders and a working education system where people learn a foreign language for a few years without using it much later might not necessarily lead to a high language proficieny.
Edit: a word