Posts: 3,176
Name: Thierry
Location: I'm the uber Spaminator !
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Quote:
If you live in the United States - > Default Language = English
If you live in China -> Default Language = Chinese
etc..etc..
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It's not always so simple.
I live in Switzerland, and we have 4 official languages.
In order of importance:
1)German
2)French
3)Italian
4)Romantsch
And my country is not an exception. Belgium speaks 2 languages.
And taking your examples, China have more than 1 language. The country is so wast, that the peoples near the Caucasus are not speaking the same language than those near Asia. They are at least 7 recognized different languages in China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese...Spoken_Chinese
The south of France do speak a language that mix Spanish with French, as the north of French have a mixup with German too.
Many countries in Africa and Asia have several official languages too, given their colonial past.
Ex Russia is in the same case. There are 8 recognized derived language based on the "official" russian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian...ived_languages
In my opinion, USA is rather an exception, in the sense that it could keep an uniform language on a humongous territory without that much fragmentation of the dialects.
Maybe the origin of the country (colonization, there is) is the main reason.
But I am no linguist nor historian, even if I'm married with someone whose language preservation is her work.
To make that short, English can be more or less understood more or less everywhere.
Except in China, as I read, where the government even organized night school during the Olympic games to teach peoples how to say "hello" and give basic directions to tourists.
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