Language Translation – Who speaks what language where?
Many countries have several official languages, and most of us know...well, most of us at least know that Canada is officially bilingual, with English and French enjoying equal status under the law.
Trivial Pursuit fans may well have memorized the three official languages of Switzerland (German, French and Italian) and even know the name of the obscure 4th language spoken by 0.5% of the population (Romansch.)
But besides a few facts such as the above, it's sometimes a challenge to even name each country's major language -- much less know the nation's secondary languages.
Yet secondary languages abound all over the world.
Of course, there is a major difference between an official language that is spoken by millions of people, such as French in Canada, and minor dialects spoken in remote areas.
What interests me today is the realm of the in-between: for example, official languages spoken by very small minorities, or languages spoken in a country where you wouldn't expect them to pop up at all.
For example, many people think Belgium has two official languages: French and Dutch. But German is actually also an official Belgian language, although used as a native language by less than 1% of the population.
In South American, Argentina is, of course, mainly Spanish-speaking -- but around a 1.5 million inhabitants speak Italian as a first language. Argentina, in fact, presents quite a linguistic patchwork. Would you believe that in the Southern Argentine province of Chubut, 35,000 people speak…Welsh?
Welsh is, by the way, along with English, an official language of Wales.
These examples show that it is clearly not so easy to make simple language statements such as "In this country, people speak that language."
The wide world of languages is not so simple.
Betty Carlson
See Also
- Language Translation, Inc.
A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.