• Ascend910@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    They say being bilingual is only impressive if your first language is English. Since you are expected to know English anyways. Is it true?

    • MrsDoyle@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I met a couple in Vanuatu - one of the world’s most language dense nations - whose mother tongues were mutually unintelligible, so they communicated using the country’s official language, Bislama. A lot of bilingual people don’t speak English. Plenty of Eastern Europeans don’t speak English (unpopular during communist rule) but speak say German or Russian as well as Serbocroatian or whatever.