garbitsch wrote:Kifeas wrote:Viewpoint wrote:suetoniuspaulinus you have to understand the mindset of the time, GCs felt they were superior to TCs and Cyrpus was a Greek island so it was not necessary for them to learn Turkish but TCs had to converse with GCs out of necessity for daily transactions, so they had to learn Greek, you can draw you own conclusions.
Do you know any single country in the world that has such a population ratio difference, that exactly the same thing does not occur?
Well in Switzerland, I think Swiss people can speak their country's three official languages. Also, in Belgium the French is widely used by people living in Brussels, although Dutch speakers are more populated than the French citizens...
I am referring to countries in which the population is intermixed like it was the case of Cyprus. Your examples relate to countries in which the various linguistic groups were traditionally living in separate areas, for many centuries. But even in the case of Switzerland, besides every group having their own language, the standard and dominating every day business language of capital Zurich, is German.
In Switzerland all three languages are taught in schools, but the majority of German speaking people do not master the other two languages any where near the extend that the other two groups master the German.
