Bilinguals aren’t impressive at all. I think most people are bilinguals. Apparently, according to Journal of Neurolinguistics, we have more bilinguals (43 percent of the world population) rather than monolinguals (40 percent).
Well nobody can objectively force something to impress you or not impress you. But most people speak more than one language natively or on a regular basis, hell just short of 2 billion people (1/4 the world’s population) alone are from the Indian subcontinent region, and there the high variation/diversity of languages throughout the region make speaking 3-4 languages well the norm.
Similar story with Indonesia/Papua New Guinea. And most people in Central Asia and many European parts of the former USSR speak Russian as a 2nd language (nearly all Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and most Baltic people speak Russian to a high fluency, while also often speaking a 2nd and sometimes 3rd native language).
Then you consider language in European countries like the Netherlands (Dutch/English), Belgium (French/Dutch/English), Sweden (Swedish/English), Finland (Finnish/Swedish), Denmark & Norway (Denmark or Norwegian / some obscure highly derived dialect that’s different enough from the standard and common languages to be counted), Spain (Castillian/some other Spanish language), Italy (Standard Italian/some other Italian language). I’d say at least a third of Europeans speak more than one language natively and two thirds can speak more than one language well at all.
Despite being a massive continent, one thing that can be said about almost all of the socities there is that most of them are polylingual. Probably less so in Arabic-speaking majority countries.
Really, monolingualism is only the norm for anglo countries – especially the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand. Not so much in like half of Canada. I think it could be said that monolingualism is the norm in most of China too, but I’m not so sure about that. AFAIK it’s pretty mixed in Latin America but overall a majority of the people there speak only Spanish or Portuguese, save for places like Peru & Uruguay.
I met a couple in Vanuatu - one of the world’s most language dense nations - whose mother tongues were mutually unintelligible, so they communicated using the country’s official language, Bislama. A lot of bilingual people don’t speak English. Plenty of Eastern Europeans don’t speak English (unpopular during communist rule) but speak say German or Russian as well as Serbocroatian or whatever.
They say being bilingual is only impressive if your first language is English. Since you are expected to know English anyways. Is it true?
Bilinguals aren’t impressive at all. I think most people are bilinguals. Apparently, according to Journal of Neurolinguistics, we have more bilinguals (43 percent of the world population) rather than monolinguals (40 percent).
There are trilingual regions in my country. And one neighbouring country is mostly trilingual too(2 official languages + 1 foreign)
Well nobody can objectively force something to impress you or not impress you. But most people speak more than one language natively or on a regular basis, hell just short of 2 billion people (1/4 the world’s population) alone are from the Indian subcontinent region, and there the high variation/diversity of languages throughout the region make speaking 3-4 languages well the norm.
Similar story with Indonesia/Papua New Guinea. And most people in Central Asia and many European parts of the former USSR speak Russian as a 2nd language (nearly all Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and most Baltic people speak Russian to a high fluency, while also often speaking a 2nd and sometimes 3rd native language).
Then you consider language in European countries like the Netherlands (Dutch/English), Belgium (French/Dutch/English), Sweden (Swedish/English), Finland (Finnish/Swedish), Denmark & Norway (Denmark or Norwegian / some obscure highly derived dialect that’s different enough from the standard and common languages to be counted), Spain (Castillian/some other Spanish language), Italy (Standard Italian/some other Italian language). I’d say at least a third of Europeans speak more than one language natively and two thirds can speak more than one language well at all.
Despite being a massive continent, one thing that can be said about almost all of the socities there is that most of them are polylingual. Probably less so in Arabic-speaking majority countries.
Really, monolingualism is only the norm for anglo countries – especially the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand. Not so much in like half of Canada. I think it could be said that monolingualism is the norm in most of China too, but I’m not so sure about that. AFAIK it’s pretty mixed in Latin America but overall a majority of the people there speak only Spanish or Portuguese, save for places like Peru & Uruguay.
I met a couple in Vanuatu - one of the world’s most language dense nations - whose mother tongues were mutually unintelligible, so they communicated using the country’s official language, Bislama. A lot of bilingual people don’t speak English. Plenty of Eastern Europeans don’t speak English (unpopular during communist rule) but speak say German or Russian as well as Serbocroatian or whatever.
When someone asks me which languages I speak, I say Italian.
“…and?” “Well, English of course”
“…and?” “…and that’s it”, I’d admit embarassed.
Among young educated people in most of Europe it is common to speak at least two languages beside your native one.