Comments on: Multilingual Europe

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:27:44 +0000

In reply to Phillip.

Thank you for your interest, Philip! The number is correct (s. p. 7 of the 2012 report):
46% of Europeans have not learned another language = monolingual
54% have learned at least one other language; out of these 10% have learned 3 or more other languages (=quadrilingual+); 25% have learned 2 (=trilingual); which leaves 19% having learned one other language (=bilingual)
Hope this helps!

By: Phillip

Phillip — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 02:29:25 +0000

It says that “19% of Europeans are bilingual,” how come this is lower than other sources like the Eurobarometer? I’d like to use this article as a source but didn’t know if this has an explanation or if it’s just a typo, thank you.

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By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 01:36:50 +0000

In reply to Massimo Martucci. Thanks for sharing, Massimo! This looks fascinating! Genetic relationships between the languages may be part of the explanation for the difference you notice but language policy in education (is English language learning compulsory and, if yes, for how long?) probably plays a greater role. I'll come back to your figures and maps to study them in greater detail, for sure.

By: Massimo Martucci

Massimo Martucci — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 08:38:19 +0000

Hi Ingrid (and all),
I am a Systems Engineer in a statistical software US-based company.
By using a new piece of software of us, based on the same source of this blog post I recently made some public available reports and analysis that you can find here:
https://public15.jmp.com/packages/Knowledge-of-Languages-in-the-European-U/js-p/z0_Y6vBDDhGT4d7Jds_WT
I found that there is a significant relationship between subfamily of country official language and knowledge of English in the same country: the percentage of English people in Germanic countries is about 66%, that is the double of Balto-slavic (33%) and Romance (32%) countries. This difference is not by chance as the formal statistical teast (ANOVA) suggests – that is the last report of my package: https://public15.jmp.com/packages/EU-procedural-languages-by-Official-Lang/js-p/z0_Y6vBDDhGT4d7Jds_WT-6
Question is: does it make sense also from a linguistic point of view?
I’d like your overall opinion on the reports too – I am just a software engineer with curiosity in languages.
Cheers, Massimo

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By: Cris

Cris — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 20:14:38 +0000

Hi, I grew up in Romania…I want to make a short remark – during communist years, here they were teaching French and Russian in schools. French was considered the most important language – it used to be very popular in Europe up until a few decades ago (or at least in my country) and it was the main language of use if you wanted to communicate with foreigners
Here most people above 40 (including my teachers) know French well, but little English. So saying that they are less bilingual because of little knowledge is English – I think its erroneous….and I personally would prefer for French to become popular again, it’s tiring using English all the time I wish we had 2 languages of use (I speak them both fluently)
Oh and Russian was mandatory in ex-USSR countries (the 6 neighboring countries of Russia). Our neighbor Moldova (who actually used to be romanians) – I know Russian was forced upon them, as it was in all other USSR states. But not on the rest of us, in my country it wasn’t mandatory everyone spoke French here

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By: Khan

Khan — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:53:24 +0000

Thanks for an insightful post. I would like to share one lived experience of multilingual Pakistan. Like all other places the state claims to promote multilingualism and an average Pakistan has two or more than two languages in his/her repertoires, the relations between these multilingual populations is rather asymmetric. The difference and social distance is so very obvious. Despite being officially labeled as multilinguals, their mastery/competencies in marketable languages vary to a great extent. I wonder that despite sharing the same culture, the speech communities develop very different linguistic practices. I point I am trying to make is that giving facts about multilingual population is one thing. The emerging relations between them are another. In the case of Pakistan, it seems that peoples’ access to valued linguistic resources are regulated through the formation of private institutions where the language practices and processes are very exclusive and monopolized by the new multilingual cosmopolitan elites. The statistics given in the report rings a sentence from Conrad’s Lord Jim:

‘They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything’.

By: Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江 — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:13:05 +0000

This is the kind of report that needs to be discussed among researchers, educators and government officials in ASEAN. I’m yet to see a coordinated research effort in monitoring linguistic resources like this one and the current debate seems rather focused on how to improve English. Having been here for almost a year, the only pro-multilingual argument I’ve heard to date is by the former prime minister of Thailand at a university forum. He stressed that English is not enough to create a strong ASEAN and more effort should be directed to teaching regional Asian languages. The rest of the forum, however, was all about how that particular university is seen as a leading university and its graduates are perceived as excellent workers by their employers because its language of instruction is English. At the same time, although I don’t have official stats, there seems to be an increasing number of government, private and commercial schools that are teaching Chinese as a foreign language; I often hear the problem of finding ‘quality’ EFL teachers, but I’m under the impression (at least in Bangkok) that there is plenty of qualified CFL teachers around. I wonder how this will play out in the future…

By: Christof Demont-Heinrich

Christof Demont-Heinrich — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:45:26 +0000

Sorry, fascinating report to me (and very germane to proposals I’m working on ;-), can’t help myself –>
“The proportion of Europeans believing that there are no languages that are important for a child to learn for their future remains the same (2%). ” (p. 78)

Wonder what the response would be like in the U.S.?

Yes, it would also be low, but I’m guessing a significantly higher percentage of Americans than Europeans would say they don’t think learning a foreign language is that important — and why not? “Their” language is “the” global language, after all, the language Europeans overwhelming cite as “the most useful” in this survey.