On multi lingualism

Commondreams.org has had articles about English only legislation. And while I agree that a person living in foreign country needs to have some command of the native language for integration, I hope I never have to live in a monolingual society again. It is just boring. Switzerland, a country of seven million people has four national languages. Geneva, which is about 47% foreign is a cacophony of tongues.
Walking by an employment agency with jobs posted in the window, every single one required a minimum of two languages. One listed seven and that was for a secretary.
Most social events I go to are multi lingual. A Turkish film I saw the other night used Turkish, German, English with German and French subtitles, but when they spoke German, the subtitles in that language went away. I could follow the jist but it was work.
A friend who recently broke up with a gentleman was listing the reasons. Other friends weren’t as sure if boring was good enough, or not being adventurous with food, or didn’t like to read might not be good enough reason to discard a perfectly nice human, but when she added, “and he’s monolingual,” we all nodded in agreement—that was the final straw.
There are people who have lived here 30+ years and boast a word of French has never passed their lips. Maybe they are happy, but they do miss out on a lot of the great things that require French, plus the need to have someone help them through the bureaucratic details we can never escape must be frustrating.
And then I think of the Englishman living in Southern Spain who said he would never go back to the UK. “Too many foreigners. And they won’t even learn English.” Later when asked how his Spanish was, he replied, “I can order a beer but not much more.” He had been there a good five years. Amen.