If you speak 2 languages you’re bilingual
If you speak 3 languages you’re trilingual
If you speak 4 languages you’re quadrilingual
If you speak 1 language you’re American!
I was at dinner in southern German with some customers I was visiting. The topic of language came up and why do many Americans only knew one. I asked them how many native languages were spoken within 900 miles (or 1500 kilometers as I said it in European 🙂). They had about a dozen and a half and were arguing how far into eastern Europe and Scandinavia the distance went. For me from my home it was one. Of course 901 miles hit Quebec for a second, which is why I picked 900.
People mock Americans for speaking one language but avoid the truth that foreigners have the easy choice of learning American English as a second language. For most of the world, their first language is severely deficient and just adds English words where their language has none.
Adding American English is a plus. Their gain in learning American English is far, far greater than the gain of an American learning their language. They're stepping into a wider world if they learn American English. Learning their language is often stepping into a narrower world.
If you really want to see self-righteous hypocrisy, ask them if their children can speak to their grandparents in either American English or their native language - they overwhelmingly can't. So these same foreigners think Americans should learn a foreign language when they themselves won't ensure their own children do.
Cantonese speakers and Mandarin speakers often speak to each other in English. Canada copes with French and English.
For Americans, learning another language is like walking out of a building that everyone else is rushing into. Which language should I learn?
Arabic
Cantonese
French
German
Greek
Hausa
Hindi
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Korean
Latin
Mandarian
Nigerian Pidgin
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swahili
Tagalog
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Urdu
Vietnamese
Western Punjabi