(no subject)

[randomness]

One of the amusing ways I have come up with to think about what one might call language environments is to think of them as subtitled films. The language environment as I think of it includes both actual printed signs as well as conversations.

In that framework, I offer this progression:

United States:
English, with Spanish subtitles in specific areas.

Singapore:
English, with Chinese subtitles. Occasional Malay and Tamil subtitles, but you should not rely on them.

Hong Kong:
Chinese, with English subtitles which are generally spot on.

China:
Chinese, with intermittent English subtitles of varying factual and/or grammatical accuracy. As you travel away from the big international cities these subtitles gradually fade out until in the countryside, all you get is Chinese.

Some other places, for comparison:

Anglophone Canada:
English, with French subtitles.

New Brunswick province:
English, with even more French subtitles.

Quebec:
French, with English subtitles.

South Africa:
English, with Afrikaans subtitles. Subtitles in IsiNdebele, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sesotho, Setswana, and the other four official languages are very intermittent and should probably not be relied on.

Western Europe:
local language with fairly consistent English subtitles.

Malaysia:
Malay, with English subtitles.

Thailand:
Thai, with English subtitles.

etc.

This is a framework I've come up with because it amuses me, not because I take it particularly seriously.

Comments

[dpolicar]

Israel - It's actually an English film, but dubbed in Hebrew, with Arabic subtitles, with lots of people sitting in seats nearby busily translating the important bits to the people sitting next to them into about seventeen different languages.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just an awesome mental image. I can only presume that the reality is even more awesome, a lot of the time anyway.

[dpolicar]

I was a tourist there two decades ago, so really, I haven't a clue. But I was quite taken by the polyglot nature of the place.