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One is enough. More than one is perfect.
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I think the educated person should speak the languages that are important in a particular
area. That includes obviously the official language(s) of one's country or the local
language(s) spoken in the area one resides in. It also includes English because the
knowledge of it is as necessary on the international level as the knowledge of the
official language of a particular country is necessary on the national level. And
then it is up to one's choice. If one goes to live or have business in any particular
country, it would definitely be a good idea to learn the language of that country.
The languages of neighbouring countries would not hurt too. So in my concrete situation
(I live in Lithuania) an educated person should speak Lithuanian of course, then
of course English, then Russian (because it is widespread here) and then the languages
of neighbouring countries are worth learning too: Polish, German, maybe Latvian etc.
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What about peope in other countries? I would like to hear from as many countries
as possible.
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In South Africa you won't get by with just one language. More or less everyone here
can speak at least two languages. It is nothing strange to meet someone who can speak
five or six languages. (Of course, many of the African languages are quite close,
so if you can speak one of them, you can also speak one or two others.) You have
to know at least Afrikaans or English. I must add, though, that in some areas (eg.
KwaZulu-Natal) you could get away with just English, and in some other provinces
with just Afrikaans, but it certainly isn't advisable to speak just one. It is compulsary
for kids at school to study at least two languages, of which one has te be either
English or Afrikaans.
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Down here, its more of a hobby thing. It might be compulsory to take up one language
for the first two years of high school but most would drop the language. Unfortunately,
there is no emphasis for learning other languages in the general Australian curriculum.
There is also no other preferred language to be learnt. There were trends in the
late 80's and 90's to learn either Japanese or Indonesian for business purposes,
but it really didn't pick up. Most schools either teach German, French or Italian,
but again students don't seem interested in taking up other languages.
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An educated man or woman should speak at least one other language as well as their
own. Meaning, they should be able to speak, read, write and think in the second language
as their own. Then they can add other languages at various levels of fluency. Most
people in my adopted country of Finland speak Finnish, Swedish, and English interchangeably,
as if they are at home in all 3 languages. Trying to learn Finnish though is like
learning Calculus, difficult, slow, and requiring much effort.
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