My answers may be a bit strange since I have hopped around a bit.
Yes, so it seems. Marathi and Telugu aren't really spoken in the same part of India, either, so I take it you traveled around a bit within India as well?
Yeah sort of but I don't think that affected it too much. We lived in Pune where most people spoke Marathi but my parents and family spoke Telugu so I picked up both.
Well, I lived in India for a while so I learned Hindi, Marathi, and Telugu (the latter two are regional languages which I picked up naturally and not via schooling). I also learned some English at the time, but not really until I moved to the US. Most people these days learn English so they can generally understand it, but it's usually not very polished.
Should be better in India than in most other countries, though.
Hmm, I'm not sure why you think that?
I've learned bits and pieces of other languages like Japanese, French, Spanish, Arabic, etc., but it's not all that useful to be completely honest.
Oh well. I'm slowly learning Finnish, which is as good as useless as nearly every Finn speaks English, but it's not the usefulness that makes me do it, anyway.
Oh, I'm not saying the languages themselves are useless, just that my level of (non-)mastery makes them so
English is used pretty commonly. Pretty remarkable how many people either know it or will recognize certain phrases even if they don't. It's not surprising to me that English speakers have a lower rate of learning secondary languages simply due to lack of a need for many of them.
Certainly, need is a big factor in learning languages - and exposure as well, which doesn't help English speakers either as their culture is so dominant.
Yeah, I think more people seem to be learning Spanish though, at least in places with higher first-gen hispanic populations.
/Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
24/09/2010 01:37:42 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 02:10:57 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 03:32:09 PM
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That is rather sad to say the least.
24/09/2010 04:15:32 PM
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Indeed
24/09/2010 06:23:52 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 04:00:04 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 05:47:09 PM
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Interesting.
24/09/2010 06:04:30 PM
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Re: Interesting.
24/09/2010 06:42:02 PM
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Re: Interesting.
24/09/2010 07:05:44 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
24/09/2010 09:38:05 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
25/09/2010 05:49:05 AM
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Self-study can be worth as much as formal classroom study, I suppose
25/09/2010 03:43:14 PM
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Certainly it can.
26/09/2010 12:35:56 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
25/09/2010 04:54:40 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
25/09/2010 07:38:29 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
26/09/2010 12:07:19 AM
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They should have asked about second languages rather than foreign languages.
26/09/2010 11:34:27 AM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
27/09/2010 03:18:30 PM
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