Which non-native languages are most commonly spoken in your city or town?

In St Louis, MO, they would be Bosnian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

For San Francisco, what I hear most personally:

Spanish, Chinese (mostly Cantonese I think), Tagalog, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, French (thanks to the tourists). There's more, but I hear these usually a few times a week at least.

Spanish and Chinese would probably be the only two I hear every day, throughout the day, without fail.

Does English count for HK?

Anyway, other than English, I hear alot of Tagalog and other Philippine dialects :)

English, Swedish, Arabic, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Turkish...

Here it's definitively turkish...

Polish, Bengali, Hindustani, Spanish and a Nigerian language (one of many) in my area.

A lot of Chinese (mostly Mandarin around here, Cantonese up the highway), Korean (friends), Punjabi, and there are actually a group of Peruvians at my school who do the Spanish thing.

But on a daily basis, Mandarin and Korean, hands down.

Casalpusterlengo: Arab, romanian, bengali...oh and italian. ;)

For Orlando I would have to say Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.

Chinese and Arabic tied without a doubt, I hear them every single day. And then English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and of course a lot of African dialects.

Turkish and Arabian i guess.

Spanish all the time XD.

Where i live: Spanish (native language), Armenian, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hindi (some people mistake my racial identity) and French ( I speak it with random people I meet)

Chinese and Arabic tied without a doubt, I hear them every single day. And then English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and of course a lot of African dialects.

Don't forget Japanese.

In Colombia, without a doubt it's English. I've also met a lot of people who speak German, Japanese and French.

In Miami its Spanish, Creole, Portugese, French, and Russian. But Spanish is way on the top of that list down here.

Arabic, and some african languages (Wolof, I don't know...?). I hear them everyday, in my block, in my street, in the bus.

Far and away, Spanish and Vietnamese.

In Toronto: Cantonese, Mandarin and occasionally Korean.

In Markham, Ontario it is something like 65% Cantonese 30% Mandarin and 5% English.

In the street, Arabic and some African languages.
At work, English and German. Sometimes Dutch as well.

In Toronto: Cantonese, Mandarin and occasionally Korean.

I take it thats what you hear? Because there are only 40,000 people who's first language is Korean. The most spoken non-English (1st, obviously) and French (12th) languages in Toronto CMA are:

1. Cantonese
2. Mandarin
3. Italian
4. Portuguese
5. Punjabi
6. Spanish
7. Polish
8. Tagalog
9. Tamil
10. Urdu


But the languages I seem to hear most (on the streets, family not included) would be Tagalog, Hebrew, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Basically a reflection on where I live and places that I frequent in the city.

In my city (northern Spain)... Arabic, Romanian, Polish and Portuguese.

Where I live in San Francisco, I listen to Spanish, Mandarin, Russian and Hebrew. In street day-to-day I must say Mandarin and Russian.

here in Costa Rica... english... lots of United States citizens...

Chinese in most of the area, but some pockets have a large Spanish presence. Of course it's still at least 70% English everywhere, as Boston actually doesn't have many minorities as a percentage compared to other cities.

Of the non-European languages, it's Chinese, Vietnamese, and probably Korean. But this area had an influx of German immigration 100 years ago, so it's hard to say.

In Dutch speaking Belgium:

(nearly) every day:
-English
-French
-Turkish

regularly:
-Spanish
-German
-Arabian

I have to confess that I can't distinguish between a lot of non-european languages, so there's a large "others" category. The language I hear most (apart from Dutch obviously) is "International English" used by people who don't know each others language and choose to communicate in English.

In my part of San Francisco, I rarely hear Russian or Hebrew; I always hear Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Spanish, Japanese, and Vietnamese

Spanish is Hartford's second language. More than 35% of Hartford's population speaks Spanish.

It is just a notch below official bilingual status, almost everything is also in Spanish.

Languages I tend to hear in this area are also: Portuguese, Polish, Vietnamese, Hindi (or some other Indian language), and Jamaican patois (okay, it's a dialect, but at times, it's like another language. :tongue2:)

The main ones are Spanish, Hmong and Somali but there are several dozen others.

I used to hear Quetchwa at work sometimes.

Auckland:

Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Korean, Maori, any Pacific Island language.

As per the 2006 census, in Brisbane it is:
1. Mandarin
2. Vietnamese
3. Cantonese
4. Italian
5. Samoan

Although, since then I would say the number of people of Indian decent has definitely increased and so you also hear the various Indian dialects pretty regularly.

There's a Manila Street infront of Bugis Junction, Victoria Street in Singapore(right beside the InterContinental Hotel)


Kaya palang lakarin ang Manila Street hanggang Lucky Plaza.

TAGALOG

Has to be Spanish hands down.

In Los Angeles it really depends where you live, you can drive through multiple nations in a day. In general, Spanish is quite common everywhere in LA and sometimes you as the English speaker can feel like a foreigner, which isnt a bad experience, but an experience nonetheless. But its a very short drive to a a Korean world, a Cantonese world, Vietnamese, Armenian, Tagalog, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, and more.

But on an every day basis, English and Spanish. You'd have to be tied to your bed to hear only english, and even then theres TV stations in many different languages.

In the suburbs where I live, mostly Chinese, Spanish, and I think Hindi (Indian people speak it)

In my immediate area (King's Cross, London):

Somali, Bengali, Turkish, Polish most often

But you'll hear anything on the bus into town... I guess for London as a whole probably the most commonly heard tongues are Cantonese, Caribbean Patois, Polish (+ many other E European languages), Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi, Somali, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic and numerous African languages like Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Ashanti etc.

Nearly Every Day
1)Pakistani
2)Somalian
3)Polish

Oftenish
1)Indian
2)Chinease

I live in Sydney. On a walk home from work through the CBD I would hear: Chinese (I can't tell between Mandarin/cantonese/dialects), South-East Asian languages, Indian dialects, Arabic, Korean, French, Spanish, Japanese, German.

In the suburbs you would probably hear a lot of Italian and Greek.

In Memphis, it would be Ebonics,




Merriam Webster Defines as:

"Black English"




Main Entry: Black English
Function: noun
Date: 1969
: a nonstandard variety of English spoken by some African-Americans —called also Black English vernacular



The Urban Dictionary Defines it as:

ebonics

The language of the gangstas and negroes.
Ebonics: "Yo G, you frontin me?"
English: "Excuse me, my peer, are you attempting to influence me to engage in a violent action with you?"

Ebonics: "You gots to git those Benjamins so you cin git dat bling-bling fo yo ride"
English: "You need to get money so that you can get expensive accessories for your car."



and:


Ebonics is really the study of the rules applied to turn English into some uneducated sounding pseudo-language whose purpose is for the most part to insult and denigrate "Whitey." Here is what I learned in Ebonics 1 :
i) In any English word with a contraction, eliminate the apostrophe and any letters after it.
1) Is it alright if I rollerskate through the campus ?
English) Yes, it's alright
Ebonics) It OK
ii) In a word ending in "d," substitute "dt" or "oodt."
English) That's all very fine...
Ebonics) That all reeeal gooudt....
iii) In a word ending in "ore," eliminate everything after the first "o" and add an apostrophe.
English) I won't tell you again, please shut the door.
Ebonics) I ain tellin you no mo', shet de do' !!
iv) For suffixes with 2 identical consonants followed by "er," eliminate the "er."
English) That Negro was larger and was holding a pistol.
Ebonics) Mah ***** was bigga had his fingah on yo' trigga.
v) In general, most "er"s are dropped and replaced by "ah."
English) Tower of Power
Ebonics) Towah of Powah
vi) However, in the case of a plural, "ers" is replaced by "az."
English) Negroes
Ebonics) *****z
Now, a brief poem :
They go my *****z all up in da hooudt,
*****z be pimpin' just like dey shooudt,
Leroy drive his Caddy right into a dee-itch
'Cause his punk-ass homey is too much of a bee-itch
Sistah on the pipe she hit on da stem
Homeboy got his ass in jail ageein'
Got me a supakool layin' in da free-idge
*****z be flyin' high off'n da bree-idge
Sambo fucked up, he high on dat sherm
Bustin up a cap hey cuz got de germ

So you get the general idea...



Memphis non-black residents have their own distortion of
"English" as well.



Is it a foreign language ?? indeed it is

Definitely Spanish, with Polish coming in second.

In New York, I would rank the following as most common:

1. Spanish
2. Chinese
3. Russian
4. Yiddish
5. Haitian Creole

I also hear lots of Arabic, Italian, Hindi, Polish, Ukranian, Hebrew and Korean, and some West African languages for which I am clueless.

In Mexico City, there's obviously less foreign language diversity and only English is common, but I have heard Chinese, Korean, Arabic, French and German.

As for domestic languages, I hear TONS of (Native) Indian languages, but I am clueless as to the languages.

At work, English and German. Sometimes Dutch as well.

In my case at work: german, italian, english, polish, farsi, arab, and sometimes spanish and dutch.

In Memphis, it would be Ebonics,


Ebonics is NOT a separate language, not even close.

^Absolutely right.
First, it's not a language at all; it's slang.
Second, it's slang that's native to the U.S. because it originated right here---so it's not in any way foreign.
And, Shekelcounters: I find your "ebonics lessons" offensive. Please show some sensitivity in your posts. This thread is not meant as opportunity to poke fun at ethnic groups. :bash:

Turkish by far, then Slavic languages (sorry but I cannot say which language is what, since I have no knowledges but I guess Serbo-Croatian, Polish and Russian dominate), Italian, Greek, English, Arabic, Chinese (and other similar languages) and Persian, sometimes French, Hindi, Urdu etc.

There are a lot of foreign workers (mostly low-skilled) working here in Kuala Lumpur, so you'll hear a lot of Urdu, Bengali (Bangladesh), Nepali, Burmese and in particular, Indonesian. There is also a sizable number of africans here too.

^Absolutely right.
First, it's not a language at all; it's slang.

It's not slang, it's a dialect.

Polish French Dutch Indian/pakistani

In my city, especially in the university where I go to, Korean and Hindi (or some other Indian language) is most heard of.

English(tourists) then Kurdish by far, followed by Russian, Slavic languages, Arabic and Armenian.

For Chicago and its suburbs, I would say this:

1. Spanish
2. Polish
3. Korean
4. Chinese
5. Russian

At least this is what I've heard most. What do you Chicago people think?

Because of who I work with and other companies in the same building, I hear Cantonese, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish and Hindi everyday.

Around Melbourne as a whole its probably various Chinese and Indian dialects, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian and Arabic. Also lots of Hebrew speakers in the part of town I live and hear Spanish, French and German almost everyday from tourists in summer.

Which non-native languages are most commonly spoken in your city or town?

In St Louis, MO, they would be Bosnian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

in Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal it would be:
1.French
2.Chinese
3.Ukrainian
4.Spanish

Since English is the only official language of Ontario, the most commonly spoken foreign language in Sudbury would be French. Well, actually, it's Canadian French, so I guess it isn't foreign. I don't know.

In my city, Madrid, I hear Romanian, Arabic from Morocco, and Ukrainian. I think these are the main three.

And, although it is not a foreign language but a different accent, Spanish from Ecuador and Colombia since most inmigrants in Spain are from Ecuador.

1. (Broken) English (defacto a 2nd language in most larger Dutch cities and used when somebody doesn't speak Dutch; only a small % are native speakers)

2. Papiamentu (creole language from the Netherlands Antilles heavily based on Portuguese with some Dutch, English and Spanish influences)

3. Other (Turkish, Arabic, Polish, German and some languages I can't really classify except that they are not Indo-European)

Although Turks form the largest ethnic group in my city you don't hear the language as much as 15 years ago. The same goes for Arabic. Most have lived here for so long or where born here that they are often better (or actually perfect) at Dutch than at Turkish or Moroccan. I have heard from several young Turks that they only speak Turkish with their grandparents and family/friends in Turkey.

In my city english is the most common foreign language, i heard it daily, but as long as my city has the largest chinese population in mexico, sometimes you listen at the street cantonese chinesse, not daily but sometimes.

Arabic, Cantonese, Italian.

Native: mostly English, some French occasionally.

Well, english and french.

I'm in Manila right now.

Other than Filipino and English the foreign language I've heard of since I was here are.

1) Korean
2) Hindi
3) Japanese
4) German

In my case at work: german, italian, english, polish, farsi, arab, and sometimes spanish and dutch.

I know Turkish was important in Germany but I didn't expect German to become a foreign language.

Spanglish is the lenguage of the future!!!

For Chicago and its suburbs, I would say this:

1. Spanish
2. Polish
3. Korean
4. Chinese
5. Russian

At least this is what I've heard most. What do you Chicago people think?

Polish by far. But then again I am from the diaspora, so it's only natural. ;) Next would be Spanish. These are the two biggest ones by a considerable margin. I'm from the SW part of the city. (Midway/Garfield Rigde/Archer Heights)

Typical scene in SW Chicago.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/CzasNaZywiec/IMG_0048.jpg

In Madrid the most frequent are:

1) Romanian.
2) Portugues from Brazilian people (big community).
3) Chinese.
4) Arabic.

Then:

English.
Italian.
French.

Interesting topic. Some are surprising to me, like the frequent mention of Romanian by Spaniards.

In my nieghborhood in Amsterdam (probably quite typical for Amsterdam as a whole):

1. English (by far most often heard: expats and tourists)

2. Slavic languages (mostly Polish, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian - construction workers, residents, shopkeepers)

3. Arabic (Moroccans, Iraqis, etc - residents, shopkeepers and mosque traffic)

4. Turkish (residents, shopkeepers)

In large parts of Central Amsterdam English has surpassed Dutch as the first language (expats and tourists). Often bar/restaurant menus are only available in English, and sometimes shop or restaurant staff don't speak Dutch.

In my living area, I've heared a lot of other languages other than Cantonese. The following is ranked by frequency.

1) Tagalog (As there are many Filipino Workers)
2) English
3) Urdu and other Indian and Pakistani languages
4) Bahasa Indonesia
5) Thai
6) German
7) Japanese
8) French

There are also a lot of people speaking Mandarin, Teochew and other Chinese dialacts as well.

I hear a lot of Mandarin in Hong Kong nowadays.

english...does ebonics count?

1.Spanish
2.Russian
3.Polish
4.Farsi
5.English

english...does ebonics count?

Well, I'd vote that either Eubonics or English would be the "foreign" language ... which do you hear more of?

1.Spanish
2.Russian
3.Polish
4.Farsi
5.English

Where is your city?

english...does ebonics count?

Is the Ebonics movement still alive? I heard about it a number of years ago but it seems to have died down of late.

Is the Ebonics movement still alive? I heard about it a number of years ago but it seems to have died down of late.

I'll try and answer:

Ebonics isn't a movement, and yes, it's very much alive...It's a "form" of english spoken by African Americans (though that's sort of incorrect. To put it most simply, I would say it's spoken by poor people, and It crosses racial boundaries, especially in urban settings. Out in rural areas, probably not too much.).

"Ebonics" varies all over the country, literally from city to city and region to region, each having their own variations of speech patterns and slang, with some of it being pretty universal throughout the US.

It's not a separate language at all. If you speak english, you'll understand almost everything from most people who speak "ebonics" (unless english isn't your first language, in which case you may have trouble), with the exception of certain slang terms, and maybe an accent that makes it hard to get some stuff at first (like say a strong southern accent or something).

To try and sum it up: "Ebonics" is an informal, sometimes grammatically incorrect version of english, with lots of slang thrown in...

I tried, hopes that makes sense.

Chinese (cantonese mainly, or at least I guess) , Rumenian, Russian, Arabic, Bangladeshi, Brazilian Portuguese. plus some central Africa language full of distorted English terms.

Honestly, on some streets at certain times you cannot hear one word in italian for ten minutes or so.

In my living area, I've heared a lot of other languages other than Cantonese. The following is ranked by frequency.

1) Tagalog (As there are many Filipino Workers)
2) English
3) Urdu and other Indian and Pakistani languages
4) Bahasa Indonesia
5) Thai
6) German
7) Japanese
8) French

There are also a lot of people speaking Mandarin, Teochew and other Chinese dialacts as well.

I agree with this one. Though I find it surprising that you put Filipino no.1 and English no.2.

Well where I am in Cardiff (capital of Wales) it's debatable what counts as a 'foreign' language-English or Welsh!?

Anyway, everyone speaks English so after that it's probably:

Polish
Welsh
Spanish
French.

The last two by virtue of students mainly.

Tulsa, Oklahoma: Though not a huge metropolis by far but just under 1 Million in metro Languages my ear has picked up on here are:
Cherokee
Spanish
Korean
Somali
Creole
Russian
Went to Tulsa Zoo last weekend and heard Polish, Arabic, Swedish as well.

In Miami its Spanish, Creole, Portugese, French, and Russian. But Spanish is way on the top of that list down here.

To add to those I forgot to add Italian and German.

Perth, Australia:
in order-
Italian
Mandarin
Cantonese
Vietnamese
Greek

Netanya(Israel)
russian and french
Tel Aviv
english,french and russian
Ramat Gan
russian

Here in Caracas you can hear Italian, Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese, English, German and French.

In my neighborhood I hear korean, chinese, russian, spanish and italian the most--but i work in retail and i hear dozens of more languages i can't even identify every day.

Spanglish is the lenguage of the future!!!

And you are starting the rvolution by modifying the English orthography!!! :lol:

Frankfurt is represented by 180 nations! Plus local dialects of these people!!! That is a lot!!! :eek:

when im in school, I always hear this foreign language....

korean,mandarin,japanese,persian

Stockholm nowadays:
Arabic, Somali, Tigrinya, Syriac, Amharic, Kurdish, Romany, Russian, Turkish, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Persian, Pastho, Dari and lately also Romanian, Estonian, Baltic languages, Chinese and many Central Asian languages + Mongolian.

That sums up the most heard foreign languages in the Greater Stockholm Area in the year 2008.

We've got over 200 ethnicities, it's really multicultural.

1.Spanish
2.Russian
3.Polish
4.Farsi
5.English

Maybe it depends where in Stockholm you live, but in general I wouldn't say that.

Most spanish-speaking have returned to their countries after the return of democracy and an improved economy.

In Annandale, VA its Spanish and Korean.

In Northern Virginia in general, it would be Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Hindi/Urdu and Mongolian.

In my neighborhood of Astoria in Queens, I hear as much Greek as English.

In Annandale, VA its Spanish and Korean.

In Northern Virginia in general, it would be Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Hindi/Urdu and Mongolian.

HMM... I went to high school in burke which alone had over a 300 Korean student body. most of the high schools in fairfax county from what I remember had a significant Korean student body count.

1 - English
2 - Spanish
3 - German
4 - Japanese
5 - Polish/Italian

In MILAN: Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Chinese, Sinhalese, Romanian, Albanian, Ukranian, Polish, Portuguese/Brazil, Tigrinya, Bengali, French and Japanese.

in Medellin, Colombia you would hear mostly English but German, French, italian, japanese are also heard.. I heard polish today (but it's very ramdom)

1 - English
2 - Spanish
3 - German
4 - Japanese
5 - Polish/Italian

Nope! A friend of mine worked at Volkswagen near Curitba. She said it was horrible, that the only people who spoke english and German were her co-workers. She said English knowledges are very rare to find and German even less.
She said that some of the people there had some Spanish lessons, but they learned a non-madrileno accent, more like the Argentinian, they say "sisha" or "sija" instead of "silya" ("silla") for chair.

in Jakarta:
*English
*Korean
*Japanese
*various Chinese languages

CMIIW

in Tel Aviv - Tagalog, French, Russian & English...

Spanish, Chinese, Vietnemese in San Diego

Top 5 foreign here would be English, Russian, Japanese, Korean, French - in that order. Heidelberg, Germany.

In Barcelona the most spoken foreign language is clearly Spanish. Though it's not 100% foreign, the amount of Spanish you hear is directly proportional to the amount of immigrants from southern Spain a given zone received during the 50's, 60's and 70's, the amount of immigrants from elsewhere it's receiving now and the amount of tourists there are. So Spanish means foreigners. That justifies the inclusion.

English is a distant second... after that I'd say it's various forms of Arabic, Italian, various forms of Chinese, Eastern European languages, and very distantly French and Japanese.

Chiese(native language) and English!

Maybe it depends where in Stockholm you live, but in general I wouldn't say that.

Most spanish-speaking have returned to their countries after the return of democracy and an improved economy.

Probably right in the WHOLE Stockholm area, but in the area i live in right now (Fisksatra) the list is somewhat correct. Although, i forgot "Somali" and maybe "russian" in my list would really mean all baltic languages AND russian/polish.

In Ottawa, the three I hear most commonly are probably Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese.

Top 5 foreign here would be English, Russian, Japanese, Korean, French - in that order. Heidelberg, Germany.

No Turkish and Yugoslav languages? Strange... I remember Heidelberg somewhat different! :lol:

In Poznań? German, English and... Japanese. I think these are the most often heard (by me ;) ) foreign languages.

Los Angeles - Spanish

In Rio for sure Brazilian Portuguese then,
Angolan and European Portuguese
Spanish
English
Chinese
Italian or French

English, German, Slovenian and Bosnian.

arabic... and english, chinees, on the other hand brussels oficially has two languages, french and dutch, my native language is dutch, so is french also foreign than?

In Blumenau I hear German and Spanish sometimes heh.

Here in Berlin, Vietnamese and Russian.

English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Vietnamese and Tagalog I think are the most common languages you hear in the Bay Area. There are numerous other languages also spoken here quite frequently as well.

almost everywhere I go in London nowadays I'm hearing Portuguese, its seems the city is flooded with Brazilians as of late.

In Paris 93° district, the one with the highest proportion of immigrants and with the lowest proportion of tourist ;) I would say:
northern-african arabic (a dialect different from arabic)
tamazight (algerian berberian dialect)
portuguese
bambara, wolof, dioula, sonike
kurdish
turkish
creole
teochew, cantonese
spanish
cambodian, vietnamese
polish
romanian
italian
arabic (the "real" one)
urdu

And, among the "new" languages we can hear since a few years:
wenzhou (they were the first Chinese to come but the community has drastically increased recently)
south-american spanish
brasilian and cabo-verdian portuguese
tamil (a lot since the war in Sri Lanka)
russian
romanes (since Bulgaria and Romania are in EU)
serbo-croat
mandarin

I can not pretend I can make the difference each time between teochew and cantonese, between polish and russian or between bambara and dioula ;) but at least me or somebody with me recognized those languages in the 93'.

In Blumenau I hear German and Spanish sometimes heh.

Here in Berlin, Vietnamese and Russian.

And you never hear the other 200 languages spoken in the streetsa of Berlin like Turkish, Kurdish, Farsi, Hindi, Chinese,... :lol:

In my city English, then maybe French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Cantonese Chinesse and Korean.

In Barcelona the most spoken foreign language is clearly Spanish. Though it's not 100% foreign, the amount of Spanish you hear is directly proportional to the amount of immigrants from southern Spain a given zone received during the 50's, 60's and 70's, the amount of immigrants from elsewhere it's receiving now and the amount of tourists there are. So Spanish means foreigners. That justifies the inclusion.

English is a distant second... after that I'd say it's various forms of Arabic, Italian, various forms of Chinese, Eastern European languages, and very distantly French and Japanese.

I thought Barcelona was in Spain haha just kidding I know you refer Catalan as your mother language

In London (North West)

Some kind of Indian language
Arabic
Polish (or other Eastern European language)

Turkish and vietnamese.

I'm in Vancouver, Canada so after English, I most often hear Cantonese, Punjabi, Italian, and German. This excludes French as it is one of Canada's official languages.

In Barcelona the most spoken foreign language is clearly Spanish. Though it's not 100% foreign, the amount of Spanish you hear is directly proportional to the amount of immigrants from southern Spain a given zone received during the 50's, 60's and 70's, the amount of immigrants from elsewhere it's receiving now and the amount of tourists there are. So Spanish means foreigners. That justifies the inclusion.

English is a distant second... after that I'd say it's various forms of Arabic, Italian, various forms of Chinese, Eastern European languages, and very distantly French and Japanese.

In Barcelona Spanish and Catalan are co-official languages, and Barcelona is in Spain, so Spanish is not a foreign language. I would say English, Italian, Arabic, French.

The the biggest tourist group? German?

In Barcelona Spanish and Catalan are co-official languages, and Barcelona is in Spain, so Spanish is not a foreign language. I would say English, Italian, Arabic, French.

I gave a coherent explanation of why it should be counted. Where there's Spanish, there's either tourists or inmigrants (past or present.)

I didn't say it's a 100% foreign language (anymore.)

In most "poor" (not really, but you know what I mean) neighbourhoods in the Metropolitan Area Spanish speakers outnumber Catalan speakers by a wide margin, you can't deny that, but, just the same, you can't deny that 90% of their inhabitants either weren't born here or have a direct relative who wasn't born in Catalonia (heck, a good number of the first settlers of such neighbourhoods are either still alive or died in the past 15 years! My mother wasn't born here and she's not even 60!) And in fact the same can be applied to virtually 100% of Catalans whose main language is Spanish.

Even if you're filtering 60's inmigration and their sons (of which I'm a part, although I do speak Catalan -- like many others), you still have to include Latin-American Spanish and the Spanish tourists use to comunicate with locals, both of which are very definitely foreign, and both of which clearly are more heard than English, Italian or any other language! That more than justifies the inclusion.

I wasn't implying anything else, no political intentions or anything at all :okay:

I'm sorry if you didn't like what I said, or if you find it to be off topic. That's not what I wanted, but anyway I feel this is not the place to debate it. I'm sorry if I've posted anything I shouldn't have. Let's not further derail this thread, though.

Few people in Duluth speak other languages than English.

But when you do hear foreign languages here, it's usually Spanish and Polish or Russian (I have trouble telling the difference - some Slavic language, I think Polish).

Boston: Spanish, Portuguese (people from Brazil and Cape Verde), Chinese

at my school in Los Angeles:

Spanish, Korean, Farsi

LA has near equal numbers of native Spanish/English speakers, the former thanks to huge numbers of Hispanic immigrants (...and them not assimilating the least bit)

Immigrant shall NOT assimilate but integrate themselves. Assimilationwould mean to root out all their cultural roots and heritage! If you mean this, many Americans are not assimilated... :ohno:
But is it true that there is an enormous Iranian community in Orange County? I have read something like that once....

Immigrant shall NOT assimilate but integrate themselves. Assimilationwould mean to root out all their cultural roots and heritage! If you mean this, many Americans are not assimilated... :ohno:
But is it true that there is an enormous Iranian community in Orange County? I have read something like that once....
Whatever, either way it's not working out. Italians, Irish, Filipinos, Poles etc have assimilated just fine. I'm not asking them to forget their past, but c'mon learn the language!

And yeah there's some Persians in the OC, my friend Nazanin is from Fullerton. However, most of the Persians live in Westwood and the Pico-Robertson area.

;)Okay. Learning the language is integration not assimilation. But we have the same problem with some people here also. More then 40% of the children born here with Turkish roots do not even have basic language knowledges when they enter elementary school (not even afterwards :lol:). That's why their unemployment rate is far over 30%!!! Parents who don't teach teir children the language from the beginning and avoid contacts of their children with others have no meaning how they destroy their lives. Because many integrated Turks are quite successful.

^^Of the Mexican Immigrants (nationwide) here, a whopping 23% is proficient in English.

In Los Angeles, only 60% of the Mexican immigrants are proficient, and while they are the majority, the bulk remain impoverished and unable to work in the respective booming economic sectors.

I also remember hearing about the Turkish PM visiting Cologne (I think) to address the Turkish population there, and he said that he was their leader, etc.

This is true. and he shamelessly said they should NOT integrate here! :ohno: Then he should pay the social welfare for them! :lol:
Just as Metin Kaplan, a fanatic who claimed Germany as "Islamic Republic of Westturkey",... :rofl: Okay, 3% of the population will then rule over the rest of the 97%....:lol: Such things do not even make me angry, they amuse me. But what really makes me angry is that these unemployed get a bunch of money out of the scoial welfare payed by taxes of working people and people who did many efforts to integrate! And they even "earn" some money selling drugs and mugging,... :|

In Frankfurt you hear moslty German and English.
As a business centre, english is the natural second language in the city. Apart from that you hear all the languages from the ethnic minorities such as Turkish, Korean, Thai, Polish etc.

Nearly Every Day
1)Pakistani
2)Somalian
3)Polish

Oftenish
1)Indian
2)Chinease

LOL! There are no such languages as "Pakistani" or "Indian". These two nations have loads of different languages! And even saying "Chinese" is a bit ignorant to a certain extent, as it includes both Mandarin and Cantonese.

Chinese (cantonese mainly, or at least I guess) , Rumenian, Russian, Arabic, Bangladeshi, Brazilian Portuguese. plus some central Africa language full of distorted English terms.

Honestly, on some streets at certain times you cannot hear one word in italian for ten minutes or so.

Bangladeshi??? :laugh: You mean Bengali?


Anyways, in my area you get to hear, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujrati, Polish, Lithuanian, African languages, particulraly from Nigeria and Ghana, Patois and such from the Carribean. And a bit of Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and Persian too. I think I've covered them all!

Here in Curitiba

Chinese
Spanish
English
German
Polish
Italian
Ukrainian
Japanese
Arabic (Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian)

And I forget Guarani and Kaingang, Amerindian languages sometimes listened too

Chinese and English is the most used language.

I'm in China.

In Sao Paulo

Japanese

In Texas

guess???

Nope! A friend of mine worked at Volkswagen near Curitba. She said it was horrible, that the only people who spoke english and German were her co-workers. She said English knowledges are very rare to find and German even less.
She said that some of the people there had some Spanish lessons, but they learned a non-madrileno accent, more like the Argentinian, they say "sisha" or "sija" instead of "silya" ("silla") for chair.

This is what she said. I have been to Curitiba and I could hear a lot of English and German.

Maybe your friend has problems.

This is what she said. I have been to Curitiba and I could hear a lot of English and German.

Maybe your friend has problems.
:lol: Oh yes, she has. :ohno: YOU have problems,....

Here in Curitiba

Chinese
Spanish
English
German
Polish
Italian
Ukrainian
Japanese
Arabic (Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian)
Not really. Arabic, some Polish and Spanish! Full stop!

Japanese in Hamilton, but that's because the one bus i take always has the students from the international school on it. Also Italian and Portuguese on James St. N (Jamesville)

i hear farsi or persian - the people upstairs are from Iran, urdu, hindi, punjabi, mandarin or cantonese, korean, japanese, tagalog (filipino), some eastern european ones - not sure romanian, russian i think, italian

Slovenian and Serbian/Croatian

French and German

Pretty much just Spanish. Occassionally I'll hear Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, but the only foreign language I hear on a regular basis is Spanish.

I my home town of SHrewsbury I mostly hear Polish, Latvian, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Welsh and a little bit of Chinese, Malay and Urdu.

In Birmingham where I work, Hindi/Urdu is much more common as is Bengali, Somali, Vietnamese and various African languages which I can't identify but Welsh is less common than in Shrewsbury