I have posted this in MPSIMS because I expect that answers will be primarily anecdotal. Mods, feel free to move it if necessary.
I have traveled as a tourist in official or de facto bilingual or multilingual areas, though always where I was fluent in at least one of the official languages and had at least some knowledge (less than fluent) of another. I never encountered a language barrier that could not be broken, though I admit that a fair number of the people I did encounter were involved in the tourist trade and were expected to be multilingual.
What is it like to live in a multilingual area? Is it common in Brussels to be literally unable to communicate with someone on the street because you speak Dutch and English and they speak French and German? Do Swiss companies generally segregate workers by language or have an overriding “official company language”, for example in the sense that back-office corporate drones at CutCo are expected to speak Italian at work, EdgeCom is monolingual Francophone, and CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet has German speaking teams on the fifth floor and French speaking teams on the sixth?
Here’s a previous thread where I asked about multiple languages in armed forces:
The only time I’ve lived in a multilingual area and didn’t have at least one language in common with everybody else except tourists and the occasional recent immigrant, I was a recent immigrant. It was in the Three Borders area, where Switzerland, Germany and France meet; since French is much easier for me than German and the French-speakers were much more helpful language-wise than the Germanophones, I ended up living on the French corner. One of the problems I had was that since my job was supposed to be “English only”, not only was I not allowed to join corporate-sponsored German lessons, but it was also no consideration regarding giving me working hours that allowed me to take lessons on my own - my German coworkers (not the German Swiss) would speak with each other in German constantly, but then, they were a bunch of gits in general, it wasn’t a national characteristic but a personal one.
In Catalonia I’ve run into people who were purposefully rude about switching languages; in Miami there were areas where it was well known that people might decide they did not speak English señor, enter at your own risk if you do not speak español sir. In Euskal Herria I’ve had neither problem, except for this one time…
I was “on table duty” at one of the voting stations, as an observer for one of the political parties. Observers aren’t officers of the voting station and aren’t supposed to assist with voting duties, but I’d gotten charged with the foreign voters’ list since I was able to communicate with many of them better than the officers. After a couple of hours of looking at these two pages of foreign names, a woman came in leading a man who judging by his clothes was a recent Eastern European immigrant; her own clothing marked her as a radical independentist “in professional disguise”. She talked to him in a language I did not recognize; he gave her his passport. She addressed me in Basque; the words I recognized were a name I’d been seeing for two hours, “passport” and “vote”. The passport in question was from an Eastern European country and the nationality matched that of the name in the list. I can’t speak Basque. I checked the passport, name and face matched, I indicated his voter’s code to the President of the table and handed over the passport per protocol, reminded her that he could only vote for the local elections, not for Parliament, she asked me something else I don’t remember right now but which I was also able to respond to in Spanish. She kept looking more and more intrigued by my ability to understand her, but she didn’t switch languages and well, I couldn’t! Of course the context helped; it’s hard to imagine why would someone go to a voting table, give you a passport whose picture matches his face drawn to a name that’s in the voter’s list, and be trying to buy bread…
In my experience it’s more common that people from Brussels speak Dutch and French plus English with foreigners. I have on a couple of occasions listened to Brusselians conversing in Dutch and French at the same time, switching between the languages without being aware that they do it. It sounds pretty weird.
My husband is from Switzerland and we have spent a lot of time there. In short, everyone is expected to speak a lot of languages fluently. Before he came to the U.S., on a normal day he would speak Swiss German to family, French to colleagues in other parts of Switzerland, High German in a professional setting, and English when meeting with people from other countries. He also had to study Italian, but only used that when on vacation.
When I visit Switzerland, I can easily speak English to almost everyone in everyday situation. When buying a train ticket or getting a cup of coffee, I speak English and they respond back in the same. I could buy the train ticket in Swiss German, French, Italian or High German, and most people know at least enough to complete the transaction with no trouble. Older people aren’t as multi-lingual as the younger, but anyone under 50 has a pretty good knowledge of these languages.
i) People to have some familiarity with the various vernaculars. They might not be fluent in it or be even be proficient but out of necessity they will pick up some. Passive lingualism, knowing a few operative phrases etc
II) It is very common to had a lingua Franca, a common tounge which all speak. This could vary. A
Punjabi might speak a different language than a Sindhi, but chances are they both speak Urdu and/or English.
HOng Kong can be a mix. Official languages of English and Cantonese. Some of the population even in their twenties can’t speak English. I’m 99% sure English is mandatory in schools through middle school, but even so there’s a percentage of the population that could care less (including one of my wife’s cousins). If you’re out of the main tourist and business areas, the English level drops dramatically.
It’s been a while but I’m pretty sure Mandarin does not have an official language status (but maybe in government offices). Mandarin fluency or at least lingua franca has increased remarkably. It was tough to find a Mandarin speaker 30 years ago outside of immigrants from China. Now through the power of mass media and tourist dollars, at least basic Mandarin fluency in the under 60 set is pretty high.
The number of non-local Chinese speakers of Cantonese is practically non-existent in Hong Kong.
The first time I went to Hong Kong, no one could tell me how to say “thank you” in Cantonese. All of the waitstaff (I didn’t have meaningful conversations with others, unfortunately) couldn’t tell me. They were all either Filipino or from the Mainland. :smack: