language question

penzo

I was wondering are there any countries or areas that are bilingual or have a high degree of speaking a second language, in which the second language is non closely related (i.e same language group or very close in other ways , say like english and french) and also the second language is not english?

dory

Moldova could be one such place. When I was there I met an almost equal amount of Russian and Moldovan (essentially Romanian) speakers. In the market we would speak Russian and the seller would respond in Moldovan, and we would respond in Russian and the conversation just went on like that.
I found most people denied that the spoke the other lanuguage, but could understand everything being said to them in that language. And in the university they could end up doing exams in either.

Just Like Heaven

Singapore maybe? For Mandarin and Malay/Indonesian speakers. French is spoken widely throughout Africa, and on Madagascar, which I assume doesn't have much in common with the native Malagasy. Perhaps Lithuania actually? I'm pretty sure Lithuanian is a relatively ancient language, and Russian is still widely spoken there, I'm not sure how much it has in common with other Slavic or Baltic languages. In Austria as well there have been efforts to keep multilingualism alive and apparently about 10% of people speak Hungarian or Slovenian languages in addition to German.

sNarah

Belgium
French and Dutch which are very different.

HalloweenJack

The Basque Country in Spain, Finland, parts of Africa, Europe and South America. I'm sure there's loads of places actually.