Why do non-English speaking nations speak more languages?

Ireland
March 16, 2007 6:42am CST
Hi I launched a new website this week called www.spanglish.ie and one thing that truck me this week is that coming from a English speaking country (Ireland) we don't seem to be as good as other nations on learning languages. So far, our members from non-English speaking countries appear to speak many languages, which is fantasic. I'd love to know why. I'd love some suggestions from people about how we might build our learning content to encourage us English speakers to speak Spanish? Or other languages for that matter. Thanks Paula
1 response
rosaflorence
@rosaflorence (1924)
• United States
16 Mar 07
You think thats bad? I am from the United States, my dad is white and my mother is a mexican from mexico. When I say my dad is white, what I mean by this is that he has about 6 different races in him and I guess that would make me a multi cultural person. Every race that my father has in him is all consider white though, you know, Scottish, Irish, German, etc... and the list goes on. Okay, the thing that is bad is that the only language that i speak is English. I am probably the whitest mexican that you will ever meet. My dad knows spanish, but for some reason I don't. I would love to learn another language and I think that they should teach a variety of languages in schools instead of only a few of them.