# Places with the most multilingual people. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926 "2012-07-11T20:54:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/41 "2012-07-12T15:12:40Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Most 1stL… 1stL = First Language? ---
**Author:** ![ScarletNumber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c0e974/32.png) [@ScarletNumber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ScarletNumber)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/42 "2012-07-12T16:23:18Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > It is comparable in that sense to the larger universities, or whatever city currently hosts the UN meetings. Do you mean New York? > [@Maastricht](#): > > it is nice to see that English has replaced Latin as the international language of science. (Is that the case all over the world, by the way)? Yes ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/43 "2012-07-13T06:37:01Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Also, since Andorra has been mentioned (and I can’t wrap my head around the concept that citizens from such a micro state might not know that they’re bordering Spain and France) That detail was one chick, but she was entering Tourism School in Spain, and they had a placement test. One of the multiple choice questions was about which countries does Andorra border: she chose France and Portugal. It took us upwards of a quarter of an hour to walk her through “ok, what country are you now in? Did you cross Portugal to get to Barcelona from Andorra?” until she finally grokked it (showing her a road map hadn’t helped, she was one of those people who refuse to even look at a map saying “oh, I can’t read maps!” - looking at it won’t make your eyes fall off, promise). Multilingual ones with better-functioning brains, I met by the busload; a dozen just in my 70-girls dorm. Mind you, if you want to pull a Spaniard’s leg, just ask which countries we have borders with and refuse to accept the blurted out “France and Portugal”. It’s very rare to find someone who remembers Andorra, Morocco (hello? Ceuta and Melilla? troubles at the border every few weeks?) and the UK. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/44 "2012-07-13T09:21:59Z")
Whatever gave her the idea to study at a Tourism school? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/45 "2012-07-13T09:26:12Z")
Being the heiress to three hotels will do that. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/46 "2012-07-13T10:18:58Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > 1stL = First Language? Yep ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/47 "2012-07-13T10:55:13Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Most 1stL English-speaking South Africans _do_ speak Afrikaans. They at least learn it at school, if not speak it outside. Almost all 1stL Afrikaans-speaking South Africans also speak English. Most 1stL Bantu speakers speak English and/or Afrikaans, often both, and they frequently speak _at least_ one other SA Bantu language, given the mixed nature of the townships. That’s completely leaving out the 2ndL French- and Portuguese-speaking African immigrants, who have to learn at least two of those just to get by, in addition to their native Bantu/Other languages. Or those who speak tamil or Urdu. > Or the pidgins like [Fanagalo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanagalo) or Kaapsetaal. Mandela in his book mentions that many Africans struggled with Afrikaans, he gave himself as one example. How true is that? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/48 "2012-07-13T12:15:38Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Mandela in his book mentions that many Africans struggled with Afrikaans, he gave himself as one example. How true is that? True enough, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t forced to speak it in civil society. Used to be that only English and Afrikaans were used for all official business, and for most of the country (outside the Western Cape and Natal) Afrikaans-speaking officials were much more prevalent than English. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/49 "2012-07-13T12:31:35Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > \<…\> > Mind you, if you want to pull a Spaniard’s leg, just ask which countries we have borders with and refuse to accept the blurted out “France and Portugal”. It’s very rare to find someone who remembers Andorra, Morocco (hello? Ceuta and Melilla? troubles at the border every few weeks?) and the UK. \ **Nava** , speaking about tricky questions, make sure you don’t miss this year’s RAM 😉 I will be organizing and hosting the mother of all Pub Quizzes, with questions guaranteed to be evil, evil, _ **EVIL** _ (or at least, as evil as I can make them 🙂 ) Man, it’s been **ages** since we last met! Have to keep running that RPG session as well… 🙂 \ Back to your scheduled thread 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/50 "2012-07-13T15:41:44Z")
And there will be one involving Spain’s borders? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/51 "2012-07-13T16:01:28Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > And there will be one involving Spain’s borders? 😃 Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe XD ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/52 "2012-07-13T21:08:33Z")
Many of my older relatives were fluent in Yiddish, Hebrew and English and a serious smattering of Polish or Hungarian. We met a South African woman on the bus in Paris. She lamented that her son “only” knew Africaans, French and Spanish. She told us she was pushing him to gain English fluency. My next door neighbors when growing up were from Russia. Their little girl spoke Russian, English, Yiddish (from the grandmother), Hebrew from her yeshiva and was studying French seriously for their planned trip to France. She would occasionally struggle slightly for the quite the right word in English, apparently going through at least three different possibilities in her head first. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/53 "2012-07-14T00:08:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > It’s very rare to find someone who remembers Andorra, Morocco (hello? Ceuta and Melilla? troubles at the border every few weeks?) and the UK. To be very nitpicky, Spain does not border the UK, as Gibraltar is not part of the UK. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/54 "2012-07-14T03:42:11Z")
That depends on your definitions, the language being spoken and your politics. Let me put it this way: from our PoV, if we say we have a border with “Gibraltar”, that’s akin to saying that Gibraltar is independent, and why the fuck are we not bursting that pimple in our ass if it’s independent? Oh that’s right, because they’re not independent: they’re a UK domain which the UK got from the Napoleonic wars and they’re protected by the Royal Navy; actually, if the territory was a historical one and not perceived as war payment it wouldn’t bother us (nobody has a problem with Andorra). If Spain pulled a Perejil in Gibraltar, London would be… extremely fast at expressing their displeasure. So it is not part of “the UK” in the same way and with the same exact rules, laws and standing as England or Wales, but from our PoV they are part of the UK. And what the hell: Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands also have some laws which are different from the rest of Spain (no VAT for example), but anybody who claims they’re not “part of Spain” should be careful to avoid being heard by Spaniards. We don’t distinguish between “American territories” and “the US” in everyday conversation, either; only if the distinction is somehow essential to the conversation. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/55 "2012-07-14T05:52:19Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That depends on your definitions, the language being spoken and your politics. No, it’s a matter of (legal) fact and isn’t determined by argument from analogy. Ceuta and Melilla are part of Spain, Gibraltar is not part of the UK. I feel like we’ve had this discussion before, but you seem to be basing your viewpoint on an excluded middle, where either a place is “part of” another country or it’s independent. That is simply not the case for many places in the world, and historically it was the case for far fewer. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/56 "2012-07-14T12:24:21Z")
Ok, Hibernicus, technically you’re right. But in practice, all of us thin of, and refer to, every piece of land on Earth as being part of one country or another, and this works fine for ordinary discourse. I suggest that one way we could be more accurate, but with minimal extra effort for the nitpickers, is to use the phrase “belongs to” to refer to pieces of land whose exact status isn’t obvious. But I’m with Nava on this one – “is a part of” (and “borders”) is fine for normal discourse. Like she said, a good practical test of whether Country A “borders” Country B is to consider what would probably happen if Country A decided to forcibly occult the piece of Country B in question. On an unrelated note, I just wanted to offer a compliment to Nava on her English. She uses idiomatic English phrases with erudition, precision, and grace better than most native English speakers, in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/57 "2012-07-14T14:02:04Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Ok, Hibernicus, technically you’re right. But in practice, all of us thin of, and refer to, every piece of land on Earth as being part of one country or another, and this works fine for ordinary discourse. Not all of us (especially in the British Isles, where people tend to be more alert to the legal status of different regions). In any event, “technically right” is the currency of GQ, if not of ordinary discourse. Your suggestion of “belongs to” is correct. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/58 "2012-07-14T14:20:17Z")
Okay, fair enough. I agree that the SDMB is a good place to employ an unusually high level of factual precision. Even here, though, this might not be so true when we are talking about interactions with people in real life. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/59 "2012-07-14T16:16:17Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That detail was one chick, but **she was entering Tourism School in Spain, and they had a placement test. One of the multiple choice questions was about which countries does Andorra border: she chose France and Portugal. > It took us upwards of a quarter of an hour to walk her through “ok, what country are you now in? Did you cross Portugal to get to Barcelona from Andorra?” until she finally grokked it (showing her a road map hadn’t helped, she was one of those people who refuse to even look at a map saying "oh, I can’t read maps**!" - looking at it won’t make your eyes fall off, promise). (Bolding mine) Tourism school? Good luck. > [@](#): > > Mind you, if you want to pull a Spaniard’s leg, just ask which countries we have borders with and refuse to accept the blurted out “France and Portugal”. It’s very rare to find someone who remembers Andorra, Morocco (hello? Ceuta and Melilla? troubles at the border every few weeks?) and the UK. I was congratulating myself for knowing Spanish geography better than Spaniards, until I come to the last country. I would have forgotten the UK. A trick question for French people : With which country France has the longest border? Brazil ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926/60 "2012-07-14T17:49:18Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Africa, in general, is famous for this. Most people (no cite, but this was mentioned by linguist John McWhorter in _The Power of Babel_) speak at least three languages: 1. The “tribal” language, spoken just in their part of their country, 2. The “national” African language of their country (or one of the several such), and 3. The language of the European country which formerly colonized the place. Many speak several examples of “1”, because they married into, or work with, people from another “tribe”. Africa was actually famous for these even before colonization; it’s often noted in histories of English, when talking about the influence of Africans on the development of English, that Africans kidnapped into slavery spoke an astounding number of languages. 2-3 per person was the usual number, and some spoke more. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-with-the-most-multilingual-people/627926.md?page=4)