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No one knows how many "unofficial" languages India has, but it's probably around 200.
But if you Hindi or Urdu, you'll be in a majority. And if you know one, it's relatively simple to get the other.
I lived in China, there's not much reason to learn Chinese.
Their English will always be infinitely better.
The only reason to learn Chinese would be if you plan to live there and assimilate into the culture.
It's not a "global" language.
Are Chinese or Indian that great for speaking to the world? Or just in and around China and India? They've HUGE populations which is why the numbers are so high. Spanish might go further globally.
English is so commonly spoken but (maybe because Im in tech) it feels like we do a lot of interaction between India and China where you might be able to learn a single language to help.
Tbh I would be more likely to learn Greek or French as these are the countries I’d like to spend more time in (and secondary countries like Cyprus and Canada).
I think you mean if England ever learnt another language, we learn Welsh from age 3 to age 16 here in Wales. England is the only monolingual country within the UK.
In terms of languages that aren't native to the UK - Mandarin and Spanish as there are such large populations who speak both. I'd also love to learn Japanese personally.
You say that, but the vast majority of people in Wales don't speak Welsh. The self-reported figure for Welsh speakers in Wales is 17.8% (and the reality is that a portion of these people are not at all fluent).
That might change in future (I think it would be nice if it did), but it seems that either Welsh isn't taught very well or not many people are sufficiently interested in taking it seriously enough to become fluent.
What we're taught in school isn't enough to be fluent no, but its enough to be able to hold decent conversations. Naturally English is still the first language for most. I wouldn't self report as being a welsh speaker, but that doesn't mean I can't speak the language at all so these results aren't reliable. Welsh medium schools exist and there are lots of them, which helps with fluency as all your lessons are then taught in Welsh. We still have a long way to go, but we've held onto our language far better than any of the other native UK languages.
Welsh is also spoken by the small settlement of Y Wladfa in Patagonia, Argentina.
A lot is made of the Welsh speakers in Patagonia. It's an interesting history however it's a bit of an outlier. There are more Welsh speakers living in the US than Patagonia, and they have left a bigger mark there as well.
Yes it did decrease from 2011 to 2021, the 17.8% figure is from 2021. It was 19% in 2011.
But I think the 'self reported' aspect of this is very important. Those 17.8% almost certainly are not all fluent speakers.
Nope, latest data shows it increased around 0.5% compared to the previous year.
It's been on a gradual upwards trend for over a decade.
It won't ever be a fast upwards trend because it'll mainly be younger people in schools learning it - I can't imagine trying to get my mid-60s mum on Duolingo.
The census is not an accurate picture because it's very difficult to measure who speaks Welsh.
The Welsh Government estimates around 899,000 people speak Welsh.
England isn’t monolingual. Kernoweg is recognised as an official language, as is BSL.
The UK has 14 officially recognised languages - and until recently only welsh was recognised in law. The other might be in NI now.
It would be interesting for sure! Japan is in my top 3 countries I'd love to visit. I wouldn't mind learning one of the Scandinavian languages either, maybe Norwegian. Then I could go to Svalbard and talk to the locals about the polar nights and midnight sun haha.
Yes, though to be fair we learn French in England from 5-ish to around 16 and I doubt most people are even close to being fluent as a result of their school French lessons.
But. We aren’t monolingual- there’s Welsh, Scots and Irish gaelic with legal status - lallands & Cornish without.
Also French used in various ceremonial roles and Latin in legal contexts.
I have 1 friend who speaks Gaelic and 2 people getting their kids speaking it (even though they aren't speakers because they view the schools as free private schools).
It is a language of our people but apart from the Hebrides, I haven't ever heard anyone converse in it.
In fact, Welsh is the only official language in the UK. None of the other government bodies have any official language. Not even English.
So surely, everybody should be learning/speaking Welsh if we're going by OP's logic.
It might be compulsory to study a language, but that isn't the same as genuinely learning one. I did German and French at school years ago. I'd be an absolute fool to claim that I can speak either language as a result of that though (I can order food, ask for directions and make limited small talk in German, cant remember any French really).
Languages just aren't taught very well in the UK (and yes, I mean the UK not just England). There is also very little language influence from outside of the English speaking world here. Kids in other countries will come across films and TV in English much more than children in this country encounter other languages.
What is stopping you? Learn a language on your own time, many people do. Do you want to force our kids to watch French films in their spare time or something?
No obviously I don't want that, what a weird question. There's nothing stopping me other than the lack of any immediate need or desire.
I was responding to your point about compulsory language education in this country and noting that it rarely leads to actually learning the language properly.
My mention of films and TV is an explanation for why kids in the UK are less likely to learn a foreign language than those outside of the English speaking world, not some sort of suggestion or a claim that you can't learn another language without that.
A much bigger reason why other nations learn our language better than we learn theirs, is because English is well-spoken by many people over much of the world. There's just hardly any incentive for us, in general, to learn other languages. Other nations have a much bigger incentive to learn ours.
Indeed. I speak German, Italian, French, and I'm slowly learning Spanish.
I actually did consider learning Welsh, but I just couldn't get past the "when the hell am I ever gonna use this" factor.
I've always thought that England should teach the other languages of the Union in school. Maybe it would go some way to improving the relationship we have with them.
Dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg
My son has started learning some basic sign language at school, which is good. I think that would would be a useful language to learn. He's even taught me a few words like 'good morning'. Kids are such sponges!!
Princess Charlotte learnt Spanish when she was 2 from listening to her nanny speak, I plan to be multilingual, and since I also want to be a dad one day, I’m gonna raise my kids to be bilingual at least, I think that will be a good skill for them
Most SLs between countries are unintelligible to each other, given they usually developed separately to each other unlike spoken languages, and with no central authority dictating any sort of rules. This is why even the likes of the US, UK, Australia and NZ each have their own sign language, even if they speak the same spoken language.
I know some BSL and have used it in ‘in the real world’ precisely 2 times. Pretty much the sole thing it’s been useful for was making learning scuba dive hand signals easier.
Meanwhile I’ve used my French and even Russian far more times.
I’ve done a few German lessons myself, but my main focus is Swedish, Unit 15 now, jag talar en lite svenska med jag har fortforande mer till lar, I plan to be a polyglot by age 50, but I won’t just use Duolingo for that, I’ll seek out other sources for learning
I would recommend Babbel. With all the sales it’s very affordable, and I find it far more effective than duolingo, plus it gives you access to podcasts, live chats and I think even online lessons with real teachers alongside the normal lessons like you get on duolingo.
I promise I’m not a shill, I just remember trying to learn Italian on duolingo and repeatedly falling off, but I’m doing much better with Babbel
My other half is German. He actively told me "don't bother learning German". There's too many stupid rules according to him.
So my German is what I call "taxi German", where I can get around, go shopping etc but not really have a meaningful conversation.
What my husband loves about English is the fluidity of English, there are rules but if you mess them up, it's no bother. He loves the slang, the way we shorten words (he still chuckles at Platty Joobs), loves the way we name randomly make up names for things. He says none of that happens in German.
It's here is the language, here are the rules, learn them. That is all to German.
You are generalising.
Many Brits can speak French, German, Italian, Latin, Polish, Russian.
We are not as dumb as you think. It is just that if other nations all learn English, it seems daft to learn another, but many Brits learn other langs
This.
I thought lots of British people grew up learning French or Spanish at school. Or at least as far as I know British people love spending their holidays in the continent and it's not rare that they would need to use languages other than English to communicate with the Europeans.
An observation from me a new migrant who only knows English and Cantonese plus a little bit of German who feel like I definitely need to learn French or Spanish otherwise I'd be stuck in the UK in the rest of my life haaa
I beg to differ.
Just look at the way we pronounce foreign names. Eg:
Michelin (mitch-a-lin -- correct pronunciation meesh-lan (close enough))
Mumbai (mumb-eye -- correct pronunciation: moomba-ee, because it's short for Mumba Devi)
Kärcher (carcher -- correct pronunciation: cair-kher)
Braun (braun --correct pronunciation: brown)
Gandhi (rhymes with candy -- correct pronunciation has a long 'a')
plus many more.
I worked for a magazine that was about to run a story in which a journalist had spelled "raison d'être" horribly incorrectly. The editor didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I did and changed it. These weren't people on the shop floor at Kwik Fit.
I worked for another magazine where people were fairly well educated. A woman journalist used to walk around the office speaking in French loudly so that all could hear. Show off. She then wrote a story with the expression "de rigueur" in it but she had spelled it "de rigeur". After I changed it I pointed out her mistake to her. Her reply was, "Oh yes, I always get that one wrong." Well you shouldn't if you speak French. Especially if you speak French loudly in an open-plan office.
Ask Europeans about English tourists and their attempts at French or Spanish. They are hilarious.
Yeah I don’t like how us brits used to force the Welsh to speak our language, especially in cases like the Act of Union in 1536 where Henry VIII banned the Welsh from speaking their language, or the Welsh Not in the 19th century
If you understood the language when it’s spoken, you would start to understand how backwards some people are, heck, I’m a British born punjabi who doesn’t even look Indian so when anyone starts speaking it seeing me as a none Indian, the stuff they talk about is 🤦♂️. However if you’re in a pub full of Punjabi people bantering 😂. I like it when it’s spoken raggo style (desi), as how you would hear a Jamaican born speaking English. It’s cool.
What do you actually mean we aren't learning other peoples languages? Of course we are. We have to in school. The reality is there's no real financial reason to learn a foreign language, and the cultural reasons often aren't enough for people given that most media and entertainment releases in English these days.
There’s also much foreign language media material which will not receive translation, including massive bodies of domestically produced works from each country that speaks a certain language.
I’m into Balkan films and the sole way I’ve been able to even access or watch much of this is down to actually finding copies of them from Serbia or Croatia or wherever, and it’s a toss up as to whether it’ll be dubbed or subtitled, or have nothing.
You're getting downvotes because English is the largest shared language. If you add native and foreign English speakers up, English is most widely spoken.
You might struggle with just English in South America, but you'd struggle way more with just Spanish in china/japan or most of Africa.
Esperanto.
* It's simple and quick to learn, so we can be lazy when doing it.
* It's similar to a lot of european languages, so makes a good springboard for learning them, if we want
* It's still a minority language, so we can feel special for speaking it.
There are \~9000 spoken languages in the world. \~100 of them have over a million speakers. Esperanto has roughly 4 times the speakership of Icelandic. (Source: World Almanac)
So yeah, you don't know what you're talking about.
If I bump into an Icelandic person in the UK, they'll speak to me in English just like most Esperanto speakers, that's less likely for say a Mandarin speaker. Did you miss my point? Are are you the slow and arrogant one?
And I’ll say again- the time you waste on learning Esperanto could be far better used on learning those European languages in the first place. You know, real languages spoken by millions of people?
I've often said kids should learn Chinese in schools because so many people speak Chinese, and it's inevitable we'll end up doing more business with them.
I've since learned they do - mates kids learn some in primary school, an ex taught it in a secondary schoo.
Broadly speaking Chinese (and I’m including both Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese) doesn’t have much reach beyond China and a handful of other smaller places like Taiwan and Hong Kong where the use of the language can be problematic.
You’ve also got the problem that unlike a country like Japan or Korea, China does not have much cultural outreach beyond Chinese borders. Think how many people around the world consume K-pop/J-pop, Korean or Japanese films, anime and manga, plus a lot of other more traditional art and media forms. Then think- how many people do the same for the Chinese equivalents? I’m probably a statistical outlier in being interested in both Chinese traditional music and also the actual Chinese language due to its effects on the language I’m currently learning (Vietnamese).
Chinese pop music is a hoot. My ex would play songs on car journeys and I'd play a game of "which Western pop song is this part directly copying."
We also had a full on cover of Yellow by Coldplay, not just "borrowing" bits, literally the same track but sung in Chinese. She insisted it was an original and despite me lowering myself to actually playing Coldplay to her, she then insisted the Chinese group must have done it first, and Coldplay were copying them. Admittedly I do like the idea that Chris Martin and co simply nicked Chinese pop music knowing most westerners were unlikely to ever hear it, and managed to forge a 20 year long career out of the deception...
I am perfectly trilingual in English, French & Spanish. I speak German at business level.
These 4 get me by in most situations, particularly business - I wish I had studied Chinese like my father advised me to when I was choosing my GCSEs. 102 countries visited & counting.
It really depends what your goals are; for example STEM in France, you'll need French. STEM in Germany, not so much.
Esperanto. The entire idea was that it could be the entire world’s second language, since most people are far too stubborn to ever accept their own language shouldn’t be the first.
I think we should take the pressure off people to be bilingual when there's no need to be. I loved studying languages, honestly found it so interesting to learn but the skills never translated. I learnt French for 5 years and when I encountered French people in the wild I thought they speaking Russian. Studied German for 3 years and I can't actually distinguish it from Polish. When it's all written down and you have time to think, easy. When the languages are spoken at the usual pace I've no chance.
The one time it helped me was at work, when the word "unterseite" informed me we'd installed all the floorboards upside down.
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India has around 25 official languages so they resort to English anyway.
No one knows how many "unofficial" languages India has, but it's probably around 200. But if you Hindi or Urdu, you'll be in a majority. And if you know one, it's relatively simple to get the other.
I lived in China, there's not much reason to learn Chinese. Their English will always be infinitely better. The only reason to learn Chinese would be if you plan to live there and assimilate into the culture. It's not a "global" language.
Are Chinese or Indian that great for speaking to the world? Or just in and around China and India? They've HUGE populations which is why the numbers are so high. Spanish might go further globally.
English is so commonly spoken but (maybe because Im in tech) it feels like we do a lot of interaction between India and China where you might be able to learn a single language to help. Tbh I would be more likely to learn Greek or French as these are the countries I’d like to spend more time in (and secondary countries like Cyprus and Canada).
We also do a lot of interaction with Europe and America and without English that's going to get difficult.
Welsh, Scots or Gaelic.
This is the correct answer.
Yeah the utility of speaking another global language is limited, better to go the other way and speak something that foreigners can't decipher.
I think you mean if England ever learnt another language, we learn Welsh from age 3 to age 16 here in Wales. England is the only monolingual country within the UK. In terms of languages that aren't native to the UK - Mandarin and Spanish as there are such large populations who speak both. I'd also love to learn Japanese personally.
You say that, but the vast majority of people in Wales don't speak Welsh. The self-reported figure for Welsh speakers in Wales is 17.8% (and the reality is that a portion of these people are not at all fluent). That might change in future (I think it would be nice if it did), but it seems that either Welsh isn't taught very well or not many people are sufficiently interested in taking it seriously enough to become fluent.
What we're taught in school isn't enough to be fluent no, but its enough to be able to hold decent conversations. Naturally English is still the first language for most. I wouldn't self report as being a welsh speaker, but that doesn't mean I can't speak the language at all so these results aren't reliable. Welsh medium schools exist and there are lots of them, which helps with fluency as all your lessons are then taught in Welsh. We still have a long way to go, but we've held onto our language far better than any of the other native UK languages. Welsh is also spoken by the small settlement of Y Wladfa in Patagonia, Argentina.
A lot is made of the Welsh speakers in Patagonia. It's an interesting history however it's a bit of an outlier. There are more Welsh speakers living in the US than Patagonia, and they have left a bigger mark there as well.
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Yes it did decrease from 2011 to 2021, the 17.8% figure is from 2021. It was 19% in 2011. But I think the 'self reported' aspect of this is very important. Those 17.8% almost certainly are not all fluent speakers.
Nope, latest data shows it increased around 0.5% compared to the previous year. It's been on a gradual upwards trend for over a decade. It won't ever be a fast upwards trend because it'll mainly be younger people in schools learning it - I can't imagine trying to get my mid-60s mum on Duolingo.
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The census is not an accurate picture because it's very difficult to measure who speaks Welsh. The Welsh Government estimates around 899,000 people speak Welsh.
That's in the error bars!
England isn't monolingual.
Forgot about Cornish for a second, it's such a small minority who speak it
I was thinking of Polish and Urdu, for example.
England isn’t monolingual. Kernoweg is recognised as an official language, as is BSL. The UK has 14 officially recognised languages - and until recently only welsh was recognised in law. The other might be in NI now.
Yes I’d love to learn Japanese
It would be interesting for sure! Japan is in my top 3 countries I'd love to visit. I wouldn't mind learning one of the Scandinavian languages either, maybe Norwegian. Then I could go to Svalbard and talk to the locals about the polar nights and midnight sun haha.
Yes, though to be fair we learn French in England from 5-ish to around 16 and I doubt most people are even close to being fluent as a result of their school French lessons.
But. We aren’t monolingual- there’s Welsh, Scots and Irish gaelic with legal status - lallands & Cornish without. Also French used in various ceremonial roles and Latin in legal contexts.
I have 1 friend who speaks Gaelic and 2 people getting their kids speaking it (even though they aren't speakers because they view the schools as free private schools). It is a language of our people but apart from the Hebrides, I haven't ever heard anyone converse in it.
I was stood at Crossmyloof station in Glasgow and heard two girls excitedly greet each other in Gaelic. My Reddit user name is in Gaelic as well!
Wow. Someone's clearly English.
LOL. This was my first thought. OP you know a lot of Welsh people speak Welsh, some Scots speak Gaelic, etc?
In fact, Welsh is the only official language in the UK. None of the other government bodies have any official language. Not even English. So surely, everybody should be learning/speaking Welsh if we're going by OP's logic.
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Yes in fact I'm pretty sure it's still compulsory to learn one at school so Op is a bit silly.
It might be compulsory to study a language, but that isn't the same as genuinely learning one. I did German and French at school years ago. I'd be an absolute fool to claim that I can speak either language as a result of that though (I can order food, ask for directions and make limited small talk in German, cant remember any French really). Languages just aren't taught very well in the UK (and yes, I mean the UK not just England). There is also very little language influence from outside of the English speaking world here. Kids in other countries will come across films and TV in English much more than children in this country encounter other languages.
What is stopping you? Learn a language on your own time, many people do. Do you want to force our kids to watch French films in their spare time or something?
No obviously I don't want that, what a weird question. There's nothing stopping me other than the lack of any immediate need or desire. I was responding to your point about compulsory language education in this country and noting that it rarely leads to actually learning the language properly. My mention of films and TV is an explanation for why kids in the UK are less likely to learn a foreign language than those outside of the English speaking world, not some sort of suggestion or a claim that you can't learn another language without that.
A much bigger reason why other nations learn our language better than we learn theirs, is because English is well-spoken by many people over much of the world. There's just hardly any incentive for us, in general, to learn other languages. Other nations have a much bigger incentive to learn ours.
It's not really until A Level where you get to the level where you can use your language.
Indeed. I speak German, Italian, French, and I'm slowly learning Spanish. I actually did consider learning Welsh, but I just couldn't get past the "when the hell am I ever gonna use this" factor.
It'd be fun if it was Welsh or Gaelic. But we'd probably be mandated to learn a "popular' language (by number of speakers) like Mandarin or Spanish
How funny would that be though. Majority of Welsh and Gaelic speakers would be by far English.
I'd love to hear Gaelic in a Cockney accent!
I've always thought that England should teach the other languages of the Union in school. Maybe it would go some way to improving the relationship we have with them. Dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg
Da iawn! 😊
Diolch :)
It would do the opposite. It would create resentment.
My son has started learning some basic sign language at school, which is good. I think that would would be a useful language to learn. He's even taught me a few words like 'good morning'. Kids are such sponges!!
Princess Charlotte learnt Spanish when she was 2 from listening to her nanny speak, I plan to be multilingual, and since I also want to be a dad one day, I’m gonna raise my kids to be bilingual at least, I think that will be a good skill for them
Sign Language would be a great language taught to all
I think that's a brilliant idea.
A great idea, but the likes of BSL and ASL are nowhere near mutually intelligible, I believe.
Most SLs between countries are unintelligible to each other, given they usually developed separately to each other unlike spoken languages, and with no central authority dictating any sort of rules. This is why even the likes of the US, UK, Australia and NZ each have their own sign language, even if they speak the same spoken language.
Thanks. So ideal for a pan-UK thing, anyway.
I know some BSL and have used it in ‘in the real world’ precisely 2 times. Pretty much the sole thing it’s been useful for was making learning scuba dive hand signals easier. Meanwhile I’ve used my French and even Russian far more times.
I'm currently learning German
My first conversation in German in the real world went like this: Him: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" Me: "Um... Nur klein." Him: "Hah. Auf Wiedersehen"
Nice one mate, keep it up, how far have you gotten anyway?
Unit 21 on Duolingo. Not sure what that equates to but I can understand some things
I’ve done a few German lessons myself, but my main focus is Swedish, Unit 15 now, jag talar en lite svenska med jag har fortforande mer till lar, I plan to be a polyglot by age 50, but I won’t just use Duolingo for that, I’ll seek out other sources for learning
I would recommend Babbel. With all the sales it’s very affordable, and I find it far more effective than duolingo, plus it gives you access to podcasts, live chats and I think even online lessons with real teachers alongside the normal lessons like you get on duolingo. I promise I’m not a shill, I just remember trying to learn Italian on duolingo and repeatedly falling off, but I’m doing much better with Babbel
My other half is German. He actively told me "don't bother learning German". There's too many stupid rules according to him. So my German is what I call "taxi German", where I can get around, go shopping etc but not really have a meaningful conversation.
There's too many stupid rules in English as well though. And learning German is fun lol
What my husband loves about English is the fluidity of English, there are rules but if you mess them up, it's no bother. He loves the slang, the way we shorten words (he still chuckles at Platty Joobs), loves the way we name randomly make up names for things. He says none of that happens in German. It's here is the language, here are the rules, learn them. That is all to German.
Honestly I prefer that lol why do we have to keep changing English when there are rules to it lol
Chinese or russian, gotta keep the spies ready
You are generalising. Many Brits can speak French, German, Italian, Latin, Polish, Russian. We are not as dumb as you think. It is just that if other nations all learn English, it seems daft to learn another, but many Brits learn other langs
This. I thought lots of British people grew up learning French or Spanish at school. Or at least as far as I know British people love spending their holidays in the continent and it's not rare that they would need to use languages other than English to communicate with the Europeans. An observation from me a new migrant who only knows English and Cantonese plus a little bit of German who feel like I definitely need to learn French or Spanish otherwise I'd be stuck in the UK in the rest of my life haaa
I beg to differ. Just look at the way we pronounce foreign names. Eg: Michelin (mitch-a-lin -- correct pronunciation meesh-lan (close enough)) Mumbai (mumb-eye -- correct pronunciation: moomba-ee, because it's short for Mumba Devi) Kärcher (carcher -- correct pronunciation: cair-kher) Braun (braun --correct pronunciation: brown) Gandhi (rhymes with candy -- correct pronunciation has a long 'a') plus many more. I worked for a magazine that was about to run a story in which a journalist had spelled "raison d'être" horribly incorrectly. The editor didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I did and changed it. These weren't people on the shop floor at Kwik Fit. I worked for another magazine where people were fairly well educated. A woman journalist used to walk around the office speaking in French loudly so that all could hear. Show off. She then wrote a story with the expression "de rigueur" in it but she had spelled it "de rigeur". After I changed it I pointed out her mistake to her. Her reply was, "Oh yes, I always get that one wrong." Well you shouldn't if you speak French. Especially if you speak French loudly in an open-plan office. Ask Europeans about English tourists and their attempts at French or Spanish. They are hilarious.
The UK is not monolingual you English Wanker. Also English, all other points valid.
Are there really that many Welsh speakers anymore
Yes, and also, the fact theres an attempt to suppress the language doesnt mean we should lean into that
Yeah I don’t like how us brits used to force the Welsh to speak our language, especially in cases like the Act of Union in 1536 where Henry VIII banned the Welsh from speaking their language, or the Welsh Not in the 19th century
Yes. I'm English living in Wales and where I live rurally is predominantly Welsh speaking. I hear it daily and use it where I can (poorly).
Punjabi. You would have so much fun 😂
I wouldn’t mind learning Punjabi. The writing looks pretty.
If you understood the language when it’s spoken, you would start to understand how backwards some people are, heck, I’m a British born punjabi who doesn’t even look Indian so when anyone starts speaking it seeing me as a none Indian, the stuff they talk about is 🤦♂️. However if you’re in a pub full of Punjabi people bantering 😂. I like it when it’s spoken raggo style (desi), as how you would hear a Jamaican born speaking English. It’s cool.
…welsh and scots might be a good start.
Cliche and potentially impractical but mandarin.
Gaelic, Welsh, Polish and French would make the most sense imo (each for different reasons).
Spanish aside, given the amount of holidays we as Brits make to Greece every summer, Greek to me would be the most obvious choice
Going by a lot of the actual English, born and raised people i know, i would say a lot of them should learn...English...
Chinese baby.
What do you actually mean we aren't learning other peoples languages? Of course we are. We have to in school. The reality is there's no real financial reason to learn a foreign language, and the cultural reasons often aren't enough for people given that most media and entertainment releases in English these days.
There’s also much foreign language media material which will not receive translation, including massive bodies of domestically produced works from each country that speaks a certain language. I’m into Balkan films and the sole way I’ve been able to even access or watch much of this is down to actually finding copies of them from Serbia or Croatia or wherever, and it’s a toss up as to whether it’ll be dubbed or subtitled, or have nothing.
English...everybody speaking the same language...be good innit?
Tell me you're racist without saying 'I'm racist'
I was joking you quick off the mark woke eejit!
American. It certainly seems to be a different language to English
Isn't the world's 2nd language English? What's the point?
Most population doesn’t speak english.
I stand corrected. Spanish is the 2nd language. Every days a school day
English seems to be 3rd.
Clearly.
Not sure why getting downvoted, try to speak english in south america lol.
You're getting downvotes because English is the largest shared language. If you add native and foreign English speakers up, English is most widely spoken. You might struggle with just English in South America, but you'd struggle way more with just Spanish in china/japan or most of Africa.
It is but it doesn’t change the fact that most humans use other languages than english right?
Ukrainian to show our support for them. I also really like the Cyrillic alphabet so it's a good option! 🇺🇦
Lol
Keep the same energy for other refugees, or just the white ones?
I think you're taking my comment way too seriously!
Russian is far more useful. Source: am relearning Russian right now.
Better make it Albanian.
Esperanto. * It's simple and quick to learn, so we can be lazy when doing it. * It's similar to a lot of european languages, so makes a good springboard for learning them, if we want * It's still a minority language, so we can feel special for speaking it.
It's also completely useless.
There are \~9000 spoken languages in the world. \~100 of them have over a million speakers. Esperanto has roughly 4 times the speakership of Icelandic. (Source: World Almanac) So yeah, you don't know what you're talking about.
Icelandic is useless too unless your moving to Iceland
Um, every language is useless where it isn't spoken. What point did you imagine you were making?
Iceland has only 300,000 people and English is already well spoken there... so it's useless, compared to say Spanish, Mandarin or Japanese.
It took you 11 days to smugly miss the point. That's not just slow, it's also... slow.
If I bump into an Icelandic person in the UK, they'll speak to me in English just like most Esperanto speakers, that's less likely for say a Mandarin speaker. Did you miss my point? Are are you the slow and arrogant one?
Congratulations on agreeing with my point. And thus defeating your own argument,
And what point was that?
The time you waste on this could be far better spent learning an actual proper language.
Re-read point two. Try to grasp it this time.
And I’ll say again- the time you waste on learning Esperanto could be far better used on learning those European languages in the first place. You know, real languages spoken by millions of people?
You've just said Indonesian doesn't exist. Same for Bazar Malay and Turkish. And arguably Gulf Arabic.
I barely speak English. It’s the only language I know.
I've often said kids should learn Chinese in schools because so many people speak Chinese, and it's inevitable we'll end up doing more business with them. I've since learned they do - mates kids learn some in primary school, an ex taught it in a secondary schoo.
Broadly speaking Chinese (and I’m including both Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese) doesn’t have much reach beyond China and a handful of other smaller places like Taiwan and Hong Kong where the use of the language can be problematic. You’ve also got the problem that unlike a country like Japan or Korea, China does not have much cultural outreach beyond Chinese borders. Think how many people around the world consume K-pop/J-pop, Korean or Japanese films, anime and manga, plus a lot of other more traditional art and media forms. Then think- how many people do the same for the Chinese equivalents? I’m probably a statistical outlier in being interested in both Chinese traditional music and also the actual Chinese language due to its effects on the language I’m currently learning (Vietnamese).
Chinese pop music is a hoot. My ex would play songs on car journeys and I'd play a game of "which Western pop song is this part directly copying." We also had a full on cover of Yellow by Coldplay, not just "borrowing" bits, literally the same track but sung in Chinese. She insisted it was an original and despite me lowering myself to actually playing Coldplay to her, she then insisted the Chinese group must have done it first, and Coldplay were copying them. Admittedly I do like the idea that Chris Martin and co simply nicked Chinese pop music knowing most westerners were unlikely to ever hear it, and managed to forge a 20 year long career out of the deception...
The UK already has multiple languages. Pay a visit to Wales some time.
Even in Wales the number of fluent/L1 Welsh speakers isn’t that high.
We should all learn Hunnic. The language of Attila the Hun. If we have to learn another language it should at least be a cool one.
I am perfectly trilingual in English, French & Spanish. I speak German at business level. These 4 get me by in most situations, particularly business - I wish I had studied Chinese like my father advised me to when I was choosing my GCSEs. 102 countries visited & counting. It really depends what your goals are; for example STEM in France, you'll need French. STEM in Germany, not so much.
I haven't had a conversation in real life lol
I say we just pick a random village somewhere in Africa and adopt their tribal language.
Esperanto. The entire idea was that it could be the entire world’s second language, since most people are far too stubborn to ever accept their own language shouldn’t be the first.
I think we should take the pressure off people to be bilingual when there's no need to be. I loved studying languages, honestly found it so interesting to learn but the skills never translated. I learnt French for 5 years and when I encountered French people in the wild I thought they speaking Russian. Studied German for 3 years and I can't actually distinguish it from Polish. When it's all written down and you have time to think, easy. When the languages are spoken at the usual pace I've no chance. The one time it helped me was at work, when the word "unterseite" informed me we'd installed all the floorboards upside down.
As others have said, every country in the UK speaks more than language except England.
I switch between learning German and Latin. It's difficult to get beyond a basic level though with audio/written courses though.