My neighborhood has numerous attorneys, physicians, physicists, biological researchers, etc. and doggone it, for speaking they are pretty much one language folks.
The daughter in law lived here a while and she speaks 4 and understands 5 languages completely ~ but that's one out of several hundred.
Those multi-lingual Europeans aren't all that proficient in speaking more than one language. They also depend on listeners who can understand, but that's yet another talent.
I don’t know what you are talking about re multi-lingual Europeans - I have worked with many, whose English is flawless, they are obviously are fluent in their mother tongue, and I have been at meetings and conferences with them where they have spoken for hours in a third language. None of them depended on listeners who can understand.
No one who speaks only one language can be considered cultured.
Not true.
i've lived in Poland for 2.3 years now and have worked in other parts on the continent before besides living in the uk for years.
The Brits are barely monolingual, but quite a few on the continent are multi-lingual (except most Spaniards and Italians -- mor eon that later)
it's not a big deal to learn another indo-European language, but very few learn Magyar or Estonia or Finnish
For Spaniards and Italians, their languages are from simplified (Vulgar Latin) and have fewer sounds than Germanic or Slavic languages, forget about Finno-Ugaritic, so they find it hard to learn another language