Wikipedia:

List of multilingual countries and regions

Main article: Multilingualism

This is an incomplete list of areas with either multilingualism at the community level or at the personal level.

There is a distinction between social and personal bilingualism. Many countries, such as Belgium, which are officially multilingual, may have many monolinguals in their population. Officially monolingual countries, on the other hand, such as France, can have sizable multilingual populations.

Africa

Americas

  • Canada is officially bilingual under the Official Languages Act and the Constitution of Canada that require the federal government to deliver services in both official languages. As well, minority language rights are guaranteed where numbers warrant. 59.3% of the population speak English as their first language while 22.9% are native speakers of French. The remaining population belong to some of Canada's many immigrant populations or to the indigenous population. See Bilingualism in Canada
  • The Canadian province of New Brunswick, with a large Acadian population (35% French-speaking), is the only province in Canada with two official languages.
  • The Canadian province of Quebec, (7.9% English-speaking) Note: Although there is a relatively sizable English-speaking population in Quebec, French is the only official language. At the same time, most government services are available in English and French.
  • There are also significant French language minorities in the provinces of Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island. Though these provinces are not officially bilingual they do provide a number of services in French.
  • Nunavut is a Canadian territory with a population that is 85% Inuit. Its official languages are the Inuit dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun as well as English and French.
  • In many of Canada's First Nations' communities in the more isolated regions, aboriginal languages are retained. English and French are accepted in the community at the community elders' discretion.
  • In the 2006 Canadian census, information and questions are available in sixty-two languages, including eighteen First Nation languages.
  • In Guatemala, the official language is Spanish, however, there are 23 distinct Mayan languages. Not all Guatemalans speak Spanish, while some may do so only as a second or third language.
  • In Mexico, the government recognizes 62 indigenous languages, including Nahuatl spoken by more than 1.5 million people and Aquacatec spoken by 27 people, along with Spanish. There is no official language at the federal level, although Spanish is the de facto state language.
  • Paraguay, 48% of its population is bilingual in Guaraní and Spanish, of whom 37% speak only Guaraní and 8% only Spanish but the latter increases with the use of Jopará.
  • In the USA, at the federal level, there is no official language, although there have been efforts to make English the official language.
Furthermore, in Florida, at the municipal level, Hialeah recognizes both English and Spanish while Miami recognizes English, French Creole, and Spanish as official government languages.

Asia

  • In Iraq, Arabic is the official language of the state, Kurdish is the official language of the north where 4 million native speakers live. Other languages also exist among Christian communities north of and around Baghdad.
  • In Lebanon, Arabic is the official language, French and English are spoken alongside Arabic. some Lebanese are fluent in all three.
  • In Hong Kong, both English and Chinese are official languages. While Cantonese is the dominant Chinese language, Putonghua is gradually having more speakers in recent years. Although these three languages are taught in schools and are mandatory subjects, most people only speak Cantonese; relatively few people are bilingual in Cantonese and English or Putonghua.
  • In Macau, both Chinese and Portuguese are official languages. While Cantonese is the dominant Chinese language, Putonghua is also spoken. Chinese is taught in all schools, while Portuguese is mainly taught in government schools. In addition, English is also taught in many schools.
  • [[Languages of India|India]/Pakistan: There are 23 official languages in India (Including Hindi and English). The largest, Hindi, is spoken natively by 18% of the population and is largely understood by educated Indians. English is also widely used, although mainly in urban parts of the country. An Indian with a high-school education would generally be trilingual - speaking his or her own native language, in addition to Hindi and English, with varying fluency, both the languages being compulsorily (in select states) taught in most schools and colleges. For more information, see Languages of India, List of national languages of India
  • Most people in Indonesia are bilingual at an early age. They speak a local native language with their families whereas the official Indonesian language is used to communicate with people from other regions and is taught in schools as a compulsory subject. Indonesia has over two hundred native languages.
  • Many people in Malaysia are bilingual while Malaysians of Chinese and Indian descent may be trilingual. Malay, the official language of the country, is a compulsory subject learnt in all public schools, and English is the language of instruction for Science and Math. Tamil and several Chinese dialects are spoken by respective communities. The indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak speak their ancestral languages (Dayak etc). Multilingualism is common in Malaysia, most notably among the Chinese and Indian communities.
  • Philippines: Filipino and English are official languages in the constitution. Some People in native Tagalog areas are bilingual, while in non-Tagalog speaking areas it is common to be multilingual in the native and/or regional language/s, Filipino and English.
  • Singapore: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil are all official languages. As English links the different races, a group with diverse races communicate using English. In addition to English, individuals speak their ethnic language, a dialect, and usually have some proficiency with a third language from one of the four, or commonly Japanese, French or German.
  • Taiwan: Mandarin Chinese is the "official" language, but Taiwanese is commonly used in most people in southern Taiwan and most adults in northern Taiwan. In the Hakka community, some people are trilingual in Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese.
  • Kazakhstan: Kazakh and Russian both have official status—Kazakh as the "state" language and Russian as the "official" language of commerce.

Europe

see also European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
  • Belgium has three official languages: Dutch (60%) in North, French (35%) in the South and a small minority speaks German. Its bilingual capital, Brussels, is mainly French (15% Dutch).
  • Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. Swedish is spoken by a minority, about 5.5% native speakers concentrated along the coast and on the Åland Islands.
  • Gibraltar is a British overseas territory whose sole official language is English. However, most of the population is also fluent in Spanish due to it sharing its only land border with Spain.
  • Ireland, where three languages have some form of official status. In the Republic of Ireland, Irish (one of the Goidelic languages) is the first official language while English is the second. Approximately 1.7 million Irish citizens are either fluent or semi-fluent in Irish[citation needed], making it the most commonly spoken Goidelic language and the second most spoken Celtic language after Welsh[citation needed]. However English is far more commonly used as around 6% speak Irish as their first language, about half of them living in Gaeltacht regions where Irish is the everyday language. Ulster Scots, a variety of Scots, is spoken by some in northern regions, but again English is far more commonly used and Ulster Scots is less actively used in media. Irish and Ulster Scots now both have official status in Northern Ireland as part of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
  • Italy. The official language overall is Italian, while bilingualism is applied in some territories. In the province of Bolzano-Bozen German is co-official. In the Aosta Valley region French is co-official, as is Slovene in some municipalities of the provinces of Trieste and Gorizia. Ladin municipalities of Bolzano-Bozen are trilingual (Italian, Ladin, and German). Italian law n. 482/1999 enforce bilingualism also in Sardinia (with Sardu), Friuli (with Friulian), Western Alps in Piedmont (with Occitan) and other linguistic minorities.
  • Luxembourg is a rare example of a truly trilingual society, in that it not only has three official languages, Luxembourgish, French and German, but has a trilingual education system. For the first four years, Luxembourgish is the medium of instruction, before giving way to German, which in turn gives way to French. (In addition, children learn English and another European language, usually Spanish or Italian.) Similarly in the country's parliament, debates are conducted in Luxembourgish, draft legislation is drafted in German, while the statute laws are in French.
  • Malta has two official languages, Maltese and English.
  • ex-Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries: many people fluently speak Russian, especially in Slavic countries within the area of the former USSR (typically in Belarus, Ukraine. However few Poles, Slovaks and Czechs people speak Russian, despite huge expenditure in the past)
    • Republics of Russia. The language of titular nation is also official in those republics (though usage of a titular language is often not widespread).
      • Chuvash, Bashkir and Mari residents of Tatarstan also speak three languages: own, Russian and Tatar.
      • Among the Maris, widespread trilingualism has been reported (Mari-Russian-Tatar; Mari-Chuvash-Russian; Mari-Udmurt-Russian; even four languages used intermittently: Mari-Tatar-Udmurt-Russian in Mari-Turek areas)[1]
      • In the 1980s, almost all the Karelians were bilingual, speaking both Karelian and Russian (being Karelian-Finnish bilingual in Finland). Trilingualism Karelian-Finnish-Russian also occurred in the Karelian ASSR.[2]
    • Abkhazia. Elder generation of Abkhaz spoke Georgian, Russian and Abkhaz language
  • Parts of Lower Silesia voivodship of Poland, where live many people for which German is mother tongue.[citation needed]
  • Switzerland has three Confederation languages; German, French, Italian, in addition, Romansh[3] is an official language though not a Confederation language; it is found on all currency though. The cantons Valais, Fribourg and Bern are bilingual (French and German), while canton Graubünden is trilingual (German, Romansh and Italian).
  • Spain, where many regions have more than one official language: Euskadi and Navarra (Basque-Spanish), Galicia (Galego-Spanish), Valencia, Balearic Islands and Catalonia (Catalan-Spanish), but especially in Catalonia, where Spanish and Catalan both enjoy great social esteem and are both used in almost every social situation)
  • Sweden. Tornedalen and Haparanda in North Bothnia, Finnish-speaking.
  • Wales with 611,000 Welsh speakers.
  • Scotland. 58,652 Gaelic speakers, mostly concentrated in the Highlands and the Hebrides, the traditional heartland of Gaelic culture.
  • Slovenia. In the costal area (Koper, Izola and Piran) Italian is also an official language, besides Slovene. In the eastern part of Prekmurje, Hungarian is used as an official language next to Slovene. In the bilingual areas, all children are taught both languages.
  • In most countries of Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian is understood by all three groups (see Serbo-Croatian)
  • In Carpathian Ruthenia, Ukraine, Slovaks living near Uzhgorod speak Ukrainian and Hungarian in addition to their mother tongue, Slovakian. In villages near Mukachevo Germans (Swabian dialect speakers) also speak Hungarian and Ukrainian.

Oceania

  • In New Zealand, approximately 10% of the population has some reasonable degree of bilingualism with English and Māori, mostly among the Māori themselves; few are fully fluent in Māori. New Zealand Sign Language is also an official language.

Multilingual Cities

In many cities around the globe, a majority of the population frequently speaks two or more languages. There are also large cities with high numbers of immigrants such as London, New York and Toronto, where dozens of languages can be heard, but the majority of the population are monolingual.

There are many more cities of multi-lingual speakers where multilingualism a part of everyday life.

The following list is an example:

Footnotes

  1. ^ Paul Ariste Keelekontaktid. Tallinn: 1981 (Estonian)
  2. ^ Paul Ariste Keelekontaktid. Tallinn: 1981 (Estonian)
  3. ^ Federal Constitution, article 70, "Languages", paragraph 1: The official languages of the Confederation are German, French, and Italian. Romansh shall be an official language for communicating with persons of Romansh language.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 
 

Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "List of multilingual countries and regions" at WikiAnswers.

 

Copyrights:

Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of multilingual countries and regions".  Read more

Search for answers directly from your browser with the FREE Answers.com Toolbar!  
Click here to download now. 

Get Answers your way! Check out all our free tools and products.

On this page:   E-mail   print Print  Link  

 

Keep Reading

Mentioned In:

     

    Do you have the answers?