Countries where you can learn or practise two or more languages

I am learning several languages using DuoLingo. Where can I go to practise my languages and where can you and your family and colleagues go to learn and practise their languages?

Schooldays Learning Languages
I just read a message from a friend on Facebook who described his schooldays in London, England when he went to a school which had an annexe in Switzerland, where he spent some time.

What a great idea, to have a second branch of a school in another country, speaking another language, so pupils can visit the sister school and learn languages.

Twinning schools would be another idea.

If you cannot manage that, as an adult you can take a holiday in a country which speaks two languages. If you speak one of the languages well, or partially, that is a fall-back, a place to practise.

By Country

Switzerland
Switzerland has three well known languages, Italian, French, German, plus Romansch. Pick one part rather than another and you will hear and see more of the language from that area or the country just across the border. The north and centre speak German as a main language, with a dialect.

South of Switzerland they speak some Italian, although the mountains are a barrier.

The west side towards the French border, you find French spoken in Basle, which is why it is more often called called Bah - l rather than the German Basel.


Accents
But be warned, dialects and accents may be different. I found the French accent in Canada was very different from the Paris accent I learned at school in the UK in London, and from au pair girls who came to stay with me from Paris.

Belgium
Two halves of Belgium. French speaking and Dutch.

Saint Martin and Sint Maarten
Caribbean island with halves with two languages. We went to the Dutch side because the flights went there on a package from the USA, it was cheaper than the French side, and we told ourselves it would be more 'different' than the French side. We found the Dutch difficult to understand and French, which had previously seemed a barrier, suddenly seemed a lot easier and more familiar when we took an afternoon trip to the French side of the island. (Oops - where are our passports? We may need them later today, and we want a passport stamp from another country.)

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By Language

Multi-country languages:
English
English is spoken in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, several Caribbean islands. Also as an official language on documents and signs and as second language in Singapore, and much of India.

French
Spoken in France, Belgium, Canada, parts of Switzerland, several islands, such as Sardinia, as a second language in countries such as Vietnam. Spoken as a second language in parts of North Africa.

German
Spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland.

Italian
Spoken in Italy and parts of Switzerland.

Russian
Spoken in Russia and Russian satellites and neighbours, such as Ukraine.

Spanish
Spoken in Spain, South America (also called Latin America), Mexico, increasing on signs in public buildings the USA. Spoken as a second language in parts of Morocco.

Portuguese
Spoken in Portugal and Brazil and Macau and Goa in India.

Esperanto
The most popular of two or three or more created international languages.  Penpals worldwide and annual conferences. (I bought the book and course by mail order years ago. Nowadays you can learn it on line through Duolingo.)

Chinese (Mandarin)
Spoken as a second language in China where it is taught in schools. China is thought of nowadays as a united country, but at one time was a continent, with die rent races speaking different languages. It is not a tiny country, but still a large continent the size of Europe with different regional languages, called 'dialects'  although they can be very different, such as Cantonese (spoken in Hong Kong) and Macau.

Swedish
Spoken in Sweden and similar to Norwegian and Danish (but not Finnish).

Arabic
Classical and modern Arabic are different. Similarities with Aramaic, which is a root language, related to Hebrew. Aramaic is still spoken in small areas, and in official documents such as Jewish marriage certificates.

Italian
Spoken in Italy and Corsica.

Dutch
Spoken in The Netherlands (of which Holland is one part), and in part of Belgium.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, language teacher.