Multi lingual countries – Two types of bilingualism are there, social and personal but there are countries whose languages are divided by different dialects and speech patterns.
There are many such Multi lingual countries, so India has fair competition from other countries when it comes to multilingualism. Even if not multilingual, at least trilingual. Being a multilingual nation, many people have to be able to converse in at least 5 languages.
Also, there is sometimes rich colonial history at play behind this multilingual setting. Besides, there are strong regional loyalties and unavoidable cultural influence by the powerful country nearby.
So, here are the names of the Multi lingual countries that speak more than 5 languages:
1. Aruba:
In the Southern Caribbean, this country is located which is near Venezuela. Dutch is the official language here are taught in schools too. Both English and Spanish are included in Aruba’s education system. English is taught because their economy partially depends on tourism. The native language of Aruba and Papiamento are the languages spoken aside from Portugese, Spanish, Dutch and English.
2. Luxembourg:
This nation’s people are fluent in more than four languages. The locals speak with each other in Luxembourgish which is close to German but this language is enriched with French loan words.
The education system stresses on both German and French but most official businesses are conducted in French.
3. Singapore:
People of Singapore speak four official languages which are Mandarin, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. This city state is diverse from every which angle, mostly ethnically. Whilst English is stressed upon for Singapore being one of the most visited tourism destination. There are two other languages such as Hokkien and Hakka.
4. Malaysia:
Malaysia is more multilingual than the neighbouring Singapore because the basic mother tongue is Malay while rest of the people are fluent in English. There is another language that is spoken on the streets called Manglish which is a mixed one between Malay and English. There are Chinese and Mandarin taught in Malaysia, Penang and Johor Bahru.
5. South Africa:
South Africa boasts of at least 11 types of language and its speakers. The lingua franca in most of the urban areas throughout the country is English and there are other languages such as Afrikaans, Germanic tongue that can be likened to Dutch. There are other nine official languages such as Xulu and Xhosa, one that Nelson Mandela used to speak.
6. Mauritius:
This island nation located in the Indian Ocean is known as the part of Africa. Mauritians speak languages like English and French fairly fluently but the street language is Mauritian Creole. Surprisingly, some Indian descent among the Mauritians speak Indian language Bhojpuri too. So, apparently Mauritians speak three languages.
These are Multi lingual countries – So, dear fellow Indians, sorry for breaking your bubble, oops!
