bilboburgler

if he has any doubts have a look in youtube at a variety of driving situations (yes we have them to train kids) along the lines of "how to use a roundabout".

kerouac

If DH were automatically in charge of the shopping, cooking and cleaning, I might think that it could be a good idea. I kind of think that persimmondeb might appreciate being fully on vacation and not having to work as dietician as well as cook and bottle washer.

marvelousmouse

I’m vastly curious—what would a typical itinerary/set up have looked like for your parents? I love the idea of them taking their kids around Europe via bike

jlub

[QUOTE=persimmondeb;16839674] . Lack of language always makes him nervous

As a reminder as we all know:
What do you call a person that speaks two languages - answer bilingual
What do you call a person that speaks three languages - answer trilingual
What do you call a person that speaks one language - answer American

persimmondeb

Exactly! There are times when it works, but not only is it more work for me, having to return to the place we're staying so we can eat interrupts everyone's fun.

persimmondeb

[QUOTE=jlub;16840232] While none of us are completely monolingual, even DH, there is something to that....

persimmondeb

That sounds like a good idea. I think he'll be fine, but nothing wrong with practice.

walkinaround

[QUOTE=jlub;16840232] People who can't speak English and are traveling around ANYWHERE in the world should be much more nervous than someone who speaks English - the world's lingua franca.

American mono-lingualism is not much different for other native English speaking nations - e.g. Australia, UK, Ireland. Even in Canada, less than 20% of the Canadian population can hold a conversation in both English and French despite both languages being the 'official' languages of the country.

What do you call a person who can't speak English - answer 'provincial'

Not meant to insult non-English speakers but rather to make the point that the NEED to learn English to do just about anything these days drives a lot of multi-lingualism around the world. This need includes travel anywhere (even non-native English speaking nations where English is the lingua franca), general careers in global business or businesses doing business across borders, academics, science, engineering, technology, medicine, etc. Consuming a huge swathe of the greatest literature, journalism, films, music, etc), participating in global discourse on the internet, etc, etc. So for non-native English speakers, multi-lingualism is more of a basic requirement in life rather than some kind of badge of honour for cosmopolitanism.

xcountry

You can add another 16% or so to Canada’s non-monolingual total as a very high % of non English/French native speakers can also speak one of the two official languages, and in fact do so at home.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4231213

But that also speaks to the point that it’s many people who speak “other” languages who learn English that are shifting the language landscape.

I would look up the numbers in other “monolingual” countries but it’s English football time.

walkinaround

You're correct to point out that bilingualism in Canada between French and English is not the same as bi/multilingualism overall. I was not trying to compare apples to apples but merely pointing out that Canada which is famously 'officially' bi-lingual has not even really managed to drive a high level of bi-lingualism across the two official languages despite focused government efforts.

The US is a massive country relative to European countries so comparisons are often misleading. States like California, Texas and Florida would all fall among the top 10 European countries by population and they have high rates of multi-lingualism. By some measures, the US has more people who can speak Spanish than Spain has.

Anyway, the point is simply that native English speaking countries tend to have much lower rates of multi-lingualism than non-English speaking countries.

Caution with any stats around this as measures vary greatly - including measuring non-native languages spoken AT HOME vs. languages you can speak, different measures of 'fluency' vs. 'can conduct a conversation' vs can 'speak another language'. Far from straight-forward.

marvelousmouse

Most of the “multilingual” people I grew up with aren’t truly fluent. They can speak French/Spanish/Ukrainian to get by, but they’re not truly literate. And I’m including several Canadians in that. Although ime Canada doesn’t really have a higher rate of multilingualism than the US. And for the most part, the Japanese I met that were truly fluent a second language (English) were so usually because they studied or worked abroad, and became so out of necessity. Many of the others were pretty much the equivalent of me—learned a second language in high school and can kind of communicate as long as we stick to the basics—weather, food, directions. I’d like to get better because I work in a medical setting, but I don’t even get to practice much there because the (occasional) patient brings family to translate.

I think multilingualism is valuable, don’t get me wrong, but I think there’s a lot of truth to the point that non-english speakers tend to be the multilinguists because they need to learn English.