Sometimes it feels like in the US, being fluent in any language other than English is unpatriotic. Blue America makes exception for French
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Hmm. Thinking of this some more, this is truly weird. No other country I've visited to has nationalism so reducible to language chauvinism.
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but language is generally how you preserve culture really in any country. It's not really a bad thing.
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. not true. India has ~30. Even tiny Switzerland has 4. Most have at least 2. National identity can have deeper base than lang
Switzerland is a remarkable exception, not rule
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most Europeans I've met speak at least 2 languages, though admittedly my dealings are with cosmopolitan elites
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Switzerland has 4 diff langs/peoples tied together so none get political advantage over other --
generally speaking, the more languages, the less the unity -- not always true -- but mostly
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hell, look at Croatia/Serbia and Czech/Slovak -- languages virtually indistinguishable to outsiders, (1/2)
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language/identity are highly correlated (~.9) -- whether we like it or not
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