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The hosts of the next World Cup, and the largest country on Earth, post-Soviet Russia remains a place where speaking English goes down like an ice lolly in December. As a world language, learning Spanish will enable you to speak to over 400 million people in 20 different countries, with more and more learning it as a second language too.

Apart from Castilian Spanish, there are three other Spanish languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician, with high levels of bilingualism in all these communities. Only 22% of Spaniards can hold an English conversation, placing it barely above Hungary in the EU. Surprisingly, given its enormous tourism industry, at eighth is Spain. Learning to write might initially send many seasoned polyglots running, but as the writing is similar to Japanese, it’s like a buy-one-get-one-free scenario. With its population at nearly 1 billion and growing, Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world, and with its influence growing both in Asia and worldwide, many have no need to learn English any time soon. English really doesn’t get you far in China. You may know this country from Buzzfeed articles about mistranslated signs. It is also one of the most musical of the Slavic tongues, so learning the odd phrase could be a special memento of your next trip to Prague. Czech is a Western Slavic language which is very similar to Polish and Slovakian, and has cross-overs with Russian, Bulgarian, Croatian and all other Slavic languages. Only 27% of the population can hold a conversation, which ranks it not much higher than its Central European neighbour Hungary. Take it away, Alex!ĭespite its many tourists and ideal location in the heart of Europe, the Czech Republic doesn’t fare well in European terms for English proficiency. Looking closely at the limit of both multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work, this book presents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.If you were left wondering which other countries made Alex Rawling’s list of countries where you need to speak the language, wait no more! Here’s the second part of his first contribution to the Memrise blog, and we’re sure you’ll find it as thought provoking as part one. Hatterr, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Christine Brooke-Rose’s Between, Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Mutterzunge, and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, among other works, this book shows how nationalized literary print culture inverts the values of a transnational age, reminding us that works of literature are, above all, objects in motion. Beginning with this insight, this book examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication itself.

Multilingual literature defies simple translation.