How many languages are currently spoken in your country?

[Trellum]

There are countries where several languages are spoken, my country is one of those lucky ones.  Is believed 291 languages are spoken in Mexico nowadays, it would be 298, but 7 languages are not stinct.  This info was taken from the The 16th edition of Ethnologue. It's important to note that most of those languages are indigenous ones.

There are some languages I wasn't expecting to see in that list tho:  Afro-Seminole Creole and Plautdietsch.  I think it's really interesting!  The latter is a language spoken by the german diaspora in Mexico.  I actually live a few hours away from a place that is filled with german immigrants, they speak this language

Amazing, isn't it?!  I only speak one of those 291 living languages! I'm talking about spanish of course

How many languages are spoken in your country?

[Kotro]

The Constitution of Portugal recognizes three languages as official: Portuguese (duh!), Mirandese (a local dialect of North Portugal, derived from medieval Astur-Leonese) and Portuguese Sign Language.

[brookie]

I live in London, England. And here we speak...English, lol. but there's a difference is the 'quality' of English. They do teach French in Secondary school, it's compulsory for the first 3 years of secondary school. But, I'm originally from Portugal. So in Portugal there is Portuguese and Mirandese. I can only speak Portuguese, writing it is hard!

[Trellum]

Thanks for the answers guys   So far only you (two portuguese) folks have answered this thread.  I'm sure there are countries where several languages are spoken   I don't think Mexico is the only country where a lot languages are spoken, I believe a lot languages are spoken in a lot countries located in south america; most must be indigenous languages (just like in Mexico).

[andre-nunes]

I live in London, England. And here we speak...English, lol. but there's a difference is the 'quality' of English. They do teach French in Secondary school, it's compulsory for the first 3 years of secondary school. But, I'm originally from Portugal. So in Portugal there is Portuguese and Mirandese. I can only speak Portuguese, writing it is hard!

You should practice your writing too, you could be the next Camões or Fernando Pessoa! It's such a beautiful language

[Daimashin]

I live in a multiracial country that consists of three major ethnics Malay, Chinese, and Indian with smaller groups like English, American, Vietnamese, Thai, and etc. So our country speaks more than a dozen languages with different accents.

[andre-nunes]

I live in a multiracial country that consists of three major ethnics Malay, Chinese, and Indian with smaller groups like English, American, Vietnamese, Thai, and etc. So our country speaks more than a dozen languages with different accents.

How do you know what language to speak in different situations? Like if you go shopping out of town? Is it by trial and error? You try speaking different languages until you get answered?

That's really weird for me...

[True2marie]

Based on the U.S. Census, the basic languages in my country (America) are English, Italian, Spanish, French, French Creole, Korean, Chinese, German and Tagalog. 

I am sure there are other ones, but these tongues are the most prominent across the 50-states.

Makes sense to me.

See link to U.S. Census Data: http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/language_map.html

[Rosa]

In my country two languages are spoken, English and Jamaican Creole. However, we have 14 parishes and each parish does speak Creole in a unique way .

[Daimashin]

How do you know what language to speak in different situations? Like if you go shopping out of town? Is it by trial and error? You try speaking different languages until you get answered?

That's really weird for me...

After so many years living together, we have learnt to understand simple terms from each other. For example: everyone knows the Malay language and can speak it to a certain extent even though some of us have never studied the language before. Malay people can understand simple Chinese words and so on.

[sidney]

Well according to Wikipedia, there are 120 to 175 languages spoken in the Philippines, although I only know the major one which is Tagalog. The provincial dialects I don't understand at all.

[Trellum]

That's really interesting, Sidney   It looks like the Philipines is one of those countries where a lot languages are still spoken   I had no idea about that.  I guess this is common in asian countries like yours, and countries like Singapore   I wonder how hard those languages spoken in your country are!  What is tagalog like?  I'm guessing you have borrowed some words from spanish, right?

[FatesWing]

I live in America. While learning a secondary language is not as highly stressed in America as it is in other countries, there are still a high amount of people here who have studied multiple languages. Plus let's not forget about all of the immigrants from all around the world that bring their native tongue to America! I read an article that stated the number of languages spoken in the U.S are 311 total. Those languages indigenous to the U.S total 162.

Good topic by the way!

[Baburra]

The standard here is to learn English as early as possible in life, besides the native language, so I'd say there are two major languages spoken here. Although, there are a good number of Chinese residents here as well, and the Chinese culture has already mixed in with ours by now, although it's still only mostly Chinese people that make an effort to learn and speak Chinese.

[JohnSword]

I live in a multi-racial country as well, so I get to hear many different languages in one day. Since English is our main language, it's naturally the most widely spoken language.

With the Chinese being the predominant race here, you can also hear many people speaking in Chinese. Other than that, there is also Malay, Indian and much more.

[Peninha]

The Constitution of Portugal recognizes three languages as official: Portuguese (duh!), Mirandese (a local dialect of North Portugal, derived from medieval Astur-Leonese) and Portuguese Sign Language.

This is interesting information, but I've never heard anyone speaking Mirandese, in what region of the north do they speak it? Sometimes people from Madeira and Açores, especially Açores, seem to be speaking a whole new language because they reallu have a strong accent...!

[lupitabaires]

I'm in Quebec, Canada, so French and English are spoken. I'm learning French right now. While the majority of the people do speak a bit of English and it's hard to find someone who doesn't speak English, French is definitely the dominant language in Quebec. English does tend to take over though, and the Quebecois are fighting that. It's really interesting to live in such a bilingual place. It's kind of like Hong Kong, where they speak Cantonese and English.

[Champollion]

I live in Spain and there are four official languages: Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician.

If you want a job in the public sector it's compulsory to be able to speak the official languages of that area. For example a civil servant in Barcelona would have to be able to use both Catalan and Spanish.

Language is a touchy political subject in some parts: in Valencia or Mallorca they speak a language very similar to Catalan but they call it Valencian or Mallorqui.

While Spanish, Catalan and Galician are Romantic languages (i.e. derived from Latin) the origin of Basque is a  linguistic mystery. It's completely unlike Indo-European languages.

[andre-nunes]

This is interesting information, but I've never heard anyone speaking Mirandese, in what region of the north do they speak it? Sometimes people from Madeira and Açores, especially Açores, seem to be speaking a whole new language because they reallu have a strong accent...!

It's spoken in Miranda do Douro, Vimioso and Mogadouro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirandese_language

Those islanders have really characteristic accents but they are still Portuguese 

[Hedonologist]

English and Welsh. Although you could count Gaelic and Cornish, as they have recognised status, but not official. Government publications are only in English and Welsh.

[BWL]

My country officially recognises 4 languages; Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. The scenario is much more complex though, with numerous Chinese dialects and Indian languages spoken all over the country as well as with several Native languages spoken in Borneo and in the interior regions of Peninsular Malaysia. Many Malaysians speak 3-4 languages and have no trouble code-switching back and forth between the various languages.

[marmunmrhundun]

I don't know a exact number, but trust me there are a lot of different langauges being spoken in my country. I could probably go with about 20 different languages as a estimate right off the top of my head. As the population grows so does the languages being spoken.

[shamzblueworld]

There are more than 30 languages that are being spoken in Pakistan. I can only speak 4 of them though.

[Trellum]

My country officially recognises 4 languages; Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. The scenario is much more complex though, with numerous Chinese dialects and Indian languages spoken all over the country as well as with several Native languages spoken in Borneo and in the interior regions of Peninsular Malaysia. Many Malaysians speak 3-4 languages and have no trouble code-switching back and forth between the various languages.

That sounds amazing!  Malaysians must have a good brain or language, I read the left hemisphere is responsible for that.  I guess they exercise their brain often since they switch back and forth between languages and can speak at least 4 different languages.  That's such a huge merit

[tenzijth]

The official language of the Netherlands is Dutch, but there are also provincial/regional dialects like Frisian and Limburgish. It's not an official language, but almost everyone in the Netherlands can speak an intermediate level of English.