and what is the most mono lingual one that is to say fiercely speaks only 1 language and rejects other ones with a passion...
2007-08-03 20:06:29 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Depends on whether you mean the attitude of the state or that of the people.
As states, India(18) and South Africa(11) have the most official languages, and France has to be the one that insists the most on French being the one and only official language.
As for the attitude and ability of the people to speak other languages, in Luxemburg and Switzerland over 80% of all people speak more than one language fluently, in the Netherlands and all the Scandinavian countries the majority are fluent in a second language, at least that's what they are saying themselves. The least people with a second language seem to live in Britain and the US, but I don't have any figures.
The attitude of a country towards other languages has got nothing to do with whether they are democratic or dictatorial, it usually only reflects history and the attitude of the majority towards their language - that's for countries. As for the individuals, if the number of native speakers is fairly small, and they have trade and other links with neighbouring countries they are traditionally more inclined to learn their languages as well as their own. Of course this has radically changed over the last 50 years, globalisation has made everybody "neighbours" and potential trade partners.
2007-08-03 23:05:07 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
The reason that English is the 'International' Language is because it is the most common 'second language' in the world...
There are other languages..Chinese..that is more popular, but English is the language used for International Affairs and Business and Communication...
I don't think English Countries 'fiercely reject' other languages...its just that there is a need for a 'common language' and English has become it because, its the language that is used by UN and EU and all countries.
For Multi lingual it has to be the European countries, as many Europeans speak many languages because they come in contact with many different languages..
Linguists estimate that there are about 5,000-6,000 different languages spoken in the world today. The imprecision in this estimate is largely due to the fact that some dialects are in the process of diverging and it is not clear that they have reached the stage of being separate languages. If two people find each other's speech unintelligible, they are usually thought to be speaking different languages rather than dialects.
There are about 200 languages that have a million or more native speakers. Mandarin Chinese is the most common, being spoken by around 874,000,000 people as a native language. English is a distant third with approximately 341,000,000 native speakers.
See the full chart here...
http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_1.htm
The article is fascinating..I don't want to copy it all here...please have a read....
Maggi Carstairs
http://Activeenglish.biz
2007-08-04 03:31:53 · answer #2 · answered by Maggi 4 · 0⤊ 3⤋
Luxembourg is the country where they speak the most languages, all kids have to take German, French and English in school, next to their national language of Letsemburgs (sp?).
Switzerland is a good second, with almost all kids learning German, French, Italian and English.
(Or maybe they are the other way round.)
Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries follow closely with a high percentage of the kids learning 3 foreign languages in school, and all learning at least one of them to fluency.
The countries with the least people speaking a second language has got to have English as its native language, a close match between England and the USA.
Even when they have been taught a language for 10 years English speakers often are not able to really speak it, not enough to survive abroad for more than a holiday.
2007-08-04 08:47:42 · answer #3 · answered by Willeke 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Probably either belgium or the netherlands. In belgium people are better are French and in the Netherlands they are usually better at german.
both have multiple official languages and teach a lot of languages at school.
in belgium french, dutch and german are all official languages and most will speak english aswell.
In the netherlands dutch, friesian and low german are recognised as official languages. english, german and french are mandatory at school
mono lingual: probably an english speaking country. few people there learn another language because they can get by with english around the world
2007-08-04 03:20:46 · answer #4 · answered by pzler 1 · 1⤊ 1⤋
That would have to be Switzerland with four official languages: German,French,Italian and Romansh.Monolingual could apply to most countries that were under military dictatorship during certain periods in History: Spain,Greece,Chile etc.
2007-08-04 04:59:53 · answer #5 · answered by misty_aspen 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Try South Africa - They have 11 Official Languages.
2007-08-04 08:06:17 · answer #6 · answered by Fairy 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I hear that people in the Netherlands speak at least 4 ON AVERAGE - most of us seem to struggle enough with one.
2007-08-04 04:20:52 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
multi lingual = swiss, netherlands
mono lingual = france? they just dont like to speak english?
2007-08-04 12:27:39 · answer #8 · answered by askawow 47 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
oh! difficult qqquestion!
multi lingual = india
mono lingual ("... with passion") = maybe cuba - as the other user made me remember - or maybe portugal
2007-08-04 03:16:19 · answer #9 · answered by Suzye 4 · 1⤊ 2⤋
It's got to be the United States.
Monolingual...I would probably go with Ecuador or Peru.
2007-08-04 03:12:19 · answer #10 · answered by Kalikina 7 · 0⤊ 4⤋