According to Canada’s 2016 census (the most recent data available), 21% of people living in Montreal consider themselves (at least) tri-lingual. (I believe the interpretation is the ability to carry on a conversation in the three languages). 80% consider themselves already bilingual in English and French, so having a third language is quite common (Arabic or Italian being the most common third languages). This site has a map of Montreal’s distribution of “third languages”. (the blue Yiddish section at the upper left is a large Hasidic community)
What other cities (around the world - of a reasonable size) would have large numbers of speakers of three or more languages? I would guess somewhere in Switzerland, somewhere in the former Yugoslavia, or in some former USSR republic.
I suspect any South African city would qualify; most residents speaking English, Afrikaans, and at least one tribal African language like Zulu or Xhosa.
Maybe, but depends on how you classify the languages. Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are pretty much the same language, and used to just go under the banner “Serbo-Croatian.” I would consider them dialects. Slovenian is different enough, though. In Slovenia, you might have Slovenian - Serbo-Croat - Italian on the coast; in Serbia you have Serbian and Hungarian in Vojvodina area, Serbian and Albanian down in Kosovo. You’ll hear English as a lingua franca in all those places as well. I’m thinking if there would be any area comparable to the situation in Montreal, with two very dominant local languages that most people know and a third minority language, and I’m struggling for that region.
I suspect areas in India would be good candidates with residents speaking English, Hindi, and their local language. Like, say, Ahmedabad would be English, Hindi, and Gujarati.
I’ve lived in Montreal for the last eight years and it’s actually visible and fascinating. It is not uncommon to see groups of younger people (eg a group outside a club or a group of high school students on the bus) having a flowing conversation in which French and English are seamlessly swapped mid-sentence and it is impossible to determine, due to the total absence of an accent, who is actually French or English.
And it is very possible that any of those people could also speak Italian or Greek. In my office (pre-Covid) probably 30% of my co-workers have Italian last names and slightly fewer have Greek last names. Montreal is extremely cosmopolitan and diverse.
In a mid-sized city in Kenya, most everyone will speak Swahili (the regional lingua franca); the local language for that city’s immediate region (e.g., Luo); and (especially if they’re well educated) passable or even fluent English.
Vancouver, I assume, would have English, Cantonese, and Mandarin? Toronto - I heard someone once say it was the third-largest Italian city, plus everyone learns French in school. (or is supposed to).
I would assume that the reason why Montreal has a large number of trilingual speakers is that non-French or English speaking immigrants are likely to learn both French and English once in the country, and that immigrants from francophone African countries (who speak both their native language and French) also end up having to learn English once in Montreal. In fact, and remember that we’re in GQ here, one of the reasons why there’s currently a political push to reaffirm Montreal’s francophone identity is that many jobs now require English proficiency even though it’s not really needed as part of the job duties, which some believe disadvantages French-speaking immigrants who end up having trouble finding even entry-level work because of their lack of English.
There might also be the phenomenon of francophone Montrealers learning both English and Spanish. It probably pales in comparison to the trilingualism coming from immigrants or second-generation immigrants, but it might still be a factor.
Vancouver and Toronto do receive some immigrants from French-speaking African countries (in fact, in some Canadian cities like Winnipeg, such immigrants end up being a large part of the francophone community), but not in large enough numbers to make a difference. Do many people in Vancouver speak both Cantonese and Mandarin? And no, English-native or English-dominant Torontonians who took French in school cannot meaningfully be said to speak the language, with some exceptions.
If I had to take a guess as for which cities in the world have a large number of trilingual speakers, I would go with @pulykamell’s, with Indian cities having their local language, Hindi, and English. But then again, it seems that a surprisingly small number of Indians are actually fluent in English. Still, I feel it would have to be a city where a local language, a national language, and a European colonial language are all spoken.
Many Indian Cities will qualify. For example :
1> Mumbai (formerly Bombay) : Marathi, Hindi and English
2> Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) : Bengali, Hindi and English
3> Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) : Kannada, Hindi and English
@pulykamell - sorry, just noticed that you had already covered this. Should have refreshed and read through the posts.
Multilinguialism is very common in Africa. In Accra, Ghana it is quite common for someone to speak English (the official language and the language of education), Twi (the most commonly African language), a separate African language such as Ga or Ewe.
I’m struggling to find a citation, but I know that a very high percentage of Albanians speak three or more languages. Historically a very high proportion of the population could speak Italian or Greek (often both). Nowadays English is taught in schools, so a high percentage of the population is fluent in English as well. My brother spent some time in Albania, and he said that they have a popular joke about this: “Someone who speaks three languages is an Albanian. Someone who speaks two languages is a European. Someone who speaks one language is an American.”
Would the same apply in some areas of Africa, that people would know English or French as the colonial common language, Swahili, and their local tribal language?
This holds true for many places in the world (Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, etc).
There’s a trade/bussiness language, language of higher education/instruction, popular culture/media/affaires language, a national/provincial political lingua franca, and large amounts of differing local languages that one could know out of familar ties and relations.
For example in the Arab world. You might be a Syrian watching Egyptian Arabic moives, listening to Standard Arabic news, and speaking levant Arabic at home…plus English or French for work or higher education.
I am not as familiar with other parts of Africa, but my sense is that the three language pattern (an official language based on the colonial power, a widely spoken African lingua franca, and a family/village African language) is fairly common across the continent.
