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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 spea

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). The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual.

SiVal 12y ago
The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual. What nonsense. Have you ever been outside Europe?
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nkuttler 12y ago
Oh well, being officially quadrilingual, Switzerland is rather an exception in Europe.
- oblio 12y ago
  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.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    > 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.
    - oblio 12y ago
      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.
      - Dewie 12y ago
        > Well, to be honest, 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").
        oblio 12y ago
        Ok.
- VLM 12y ago
  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.
radicalbyte 12y ago
> The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual. I think that you're thinking of the UK - very few people there are bilingual. In the Southern states there are a lot of bilingual people. Neither are comparable to say Belgium, The Netherlands or Switzerland, where > 80% of the populations are bilingual.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > 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} http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/read-uk/languages http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/read-uk/l... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-languages-progammes-of-study https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curricul... The EU average is 58% of the population speak more than one language. The US? Only 20% speak another language. 291,524,091 people, of whom 230,947,071 speak only English and only 60,577,020 speak another language. http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    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.
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    - DanBC 12y ago
      You're right, but that point was that not all US schools require foreign language learning. People who can't speak another language aren't counted in the stats I quote.
dannyr 12y ago
"The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual." Where do you get your "facts"?
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sid6376 12y ago
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).
Kurtz79 12y ago
"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.
- _delirium 12y ago
  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.
- adamors 12y ago
  People whose mother tongue is a romance language usually speak at least another romance language one fluently. Foreign language != English.
  - mogrim 12y ago
    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.
ilamont 12y ago
The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual 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.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > , 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.
logfromblammo 12y ago
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.
ufmace 12y ago
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.
_of 12y ago
Here in NYC where I live, multilingualism is extremely common.

SiVal 12y ago

The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual. What nonsense. Have you ever been outside Europe?

deleted 12y ago
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nkuttler 12y ago

Oh well, being officially quadrilingual, Switzerland is rather an exception in Europe.

oblio 12y ago
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.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > 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.
  - oblio 12y ago
    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.
    - Dewie 12y ago
      > Well, to be honest, 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").
      - oblio 12y ago
        Ok.
VLM 12y ago
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.

radicalbyte 12y ago

> The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual. I think that you're thinking of the UK - very few people there are bilingual. In the Southern states there are a lot of bilingual people. Neither are comparable to say Belgium, The Netherlands or Switzerland, where > 80% of the populations are bilingual.

DanBC 12y ago
> 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} http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/read-uk/languages http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/read-uk/l... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-languages-progammes-of-study https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curricul... The EU average is 58% of the population speak more than one language. The US? Only 20% speak another language. 291,524,091 people, of whom 230,947,071 speak only English and only 60,577,020 speak another language. http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  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.
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - DanBC 12y ago
    You're right, but that point was that not all US schools require foreign language learning. People who can't speak another language aren't counted in the stats I quote.

dannyr 12y ago

"The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual." Where do you get your "facts"?

deleted 12y ago
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sid6376 12y ago

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).

Kurtz79 12y ago

"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.

_delirium 12y ago
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.
adamors 12y ago
People whose mother tongue is a romance language usually speak at least another romance language one fluently. Foreign language != English.
- mogrim 12y ago
  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.

ilamont 12y ago

The u.s. is uniquely mono-lingual 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.

Dewie 12y ago
> , 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.

logfromblammo 12y ago

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.

ufmace 12y ago

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.

_of 12y ago

Here in NYC where I live, multilingualism is extremely common.