Russian is a world language with 260 million speakers worldwide, and is undoubtedly the lingua franca of nearly all ex-Soviet countries.
#Are we really monolingual full#
Despite over 90% of Russians studying English at school, barely 10% can speak it as adults, so unless you want to face the full force of Russia’s unofficial and monolingual police force – its armies of retired babushkas, or grannies – you’d better get to grips with some phrases before you rush to see the white nights over St Petersburg. The hosts of the next World Cup, and the largest country on Earth, post-Soviet Russia remains a place where speaking English goes down like an ice lolly in December. As a world language, learning Spanish will enable you to speak to over 400 million people in 20 different countries, with more and more learning it as a second language too. Apart from Castilian Spanish, there are three other Spanish languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician, with high levels of bilingualism in all these communities. Only 22% of Spaniards can hold an English conversation, placing it barely above Hungary in the EU. Surprisingly, given its enormous tourism industry, at eighth is Spain. Learning to write might initially send many seasoned polyglots running, but as the writing is similar to Japanese, it’s like a buy-one-get-one-free scenario. With its population at nearly 1 billion and growing, Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world, and with its influence growing both in Asia and worldwide, many have no need to learn English any time soon. English really doesn’t get you far in China. You may know this country from Buzzfeed articles about mistranslated signs. It is also one of the most musical of the Slavic tongues, so learning the odd phrase could be a special memento of your next trip to Prague. Czech is a Western Slavic language which is very similar to Polish and Slovakian, and has cross-overs with Russian, Bulgarian, Croatian and all other Slavic languages. Only 27% of the population can hold a conversation, which ranks it not much higher than its Central European neighbour Hungary. Take it away, Alex!ĭespite its many tourists and ideal location in the heart of Europe, the Czech Republic doesn’t fare well in European terms for English proficiency. It seems that the concept of one being able to speak 2 or 3 languages as fluently as each other is fairly alien to most monolinguals, and the only way they can (sort of) understand our bi/trilingual abilities is to make us "pick a tongue".If you were left wondering which other countries made Alex Rawling’s list of countries where you need to speak the language, wait no more! Here’s the second part of his first contribution to the Memrise blog, and we’re sure you’ll find it as thought provoking as part one. Whenever people ask me what is my mother tongue, I would try to explain that I’m bilingual and I'm slightly better at reading and listening in Chinese, but I can express myself slightly better in English through speaking and writing. So by saying that Chinese is my first language does not justify that I am more fluent in it than I am in English. Even though Chinese was the first language that I learnt, my Chinese writing fluency has stuck at a 12 year's old level, and yet my "second language" English is as fluent as a normal British university graduate can be. Take myself for example, I was born in Macau (shame I didn't learn Portuguese) and moved to the UK at the age of 12, now I'm 24. Just because a child spoke in a different language in the first few years of his/her life, that doesn't mean this "mother tongue" will become the dominate language one will use later in adult life.
Oh my god I'm so glad you mentioned about "mother tongue"! I talked to my sister about this (as we are both bilinguals), a simple question such as "what is your mother/native tongue" can breed very complicated answers and usually do not justify one's language ability/fluency.
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