What City Speaks THE MOST LANGUAGES?
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
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For over a year, I've travelled the world asking people in major cities "How many languages do you speak?" Today we look at the results in an attempt to find the WORLD'S MOST MULTI-LINGUAL CITY!
* note that while this data is based on real unscripted interviews, these results should not be used for academic purposes or considered unbiased. many factors can affect results such as the number of tourists, how honestly people answer, or just plain old luck. it's just for fun!
0:00 - Intro
2:18 - Montreal
3:21 - Toronto
4:13 - London
4:56 - Lisbon
6:26 - Barcelona
8:46 - Mexico City
9:21 - New York City
10:12 - Harvard Campus
11:45 - Boston
12:44 - Miami
13:21 - Brussels
14:21 - Paris
15:20 - Tangier
16:49 - Amsterdam
18:37 - Berlin
19:15 - Prague
19:57 - Conclusion
As a Belgian in Quebec, I am proud that Brussels is in the top 3. Indeed, we usually speak French, English + Dutch (for the flemish part) + Arabic in Brussels (important community from Maghreb in Brussels). For your question, friends in dutch is "vrienden" (very similar). I would suggest to go to Switzerland, I think you can easily reach more than 3 on average there. ;)
Switzerland has 4 official languages but people speak usually only one of them ..... french or Swiss german ( many dialects )wich is not the same german language spoken in Germany . Swiss german has so many dialects that they dont understand each other at the PArilament . Swiss german is completely different from german in Germany .
We have 11 official languages in South Africa. Xhosa is one of them, which is what that lady in Amsterdam was speaking. It has all those 'click' sounds in it. Most people in South Africa speak 2 languages minimum. I live in Cape Town, South Africa. I speak English, Afrikaans, some German and Italian and most schools also offer some of the African languages as well.
Khosa I think she called it. There's also the !Kung language with clicking sounds, if I'm not mistaken it's the one featured in the Coca-Cola bottle movie also known as the gods must be crazy.
1. Oh, I love numbers and statistics)
2. I assumed that Brussels would be in first place, and Amsterdam would definitely be in the top 3. But Prague surprised me!
3. It was also worth shooting such a video in Ukraine. I think Kyiv would have 3 or more languages on average.
4. If we talk about the potential number one, then I think Hong Kong, Geneva, Cape Town or Sydney can push Amsterdam down.
5. Thank you for this series of videos, in particular it has inspired me to start learning a fourth language (Spanish) and I wish you good luck in the future!)
I thought about asking the question when I was in Ukraine. But it's a rather sensitive question at the moment, since a lot of people who grew up speaking Russian have stopped speaking it out of protest and/or have decided to start speaking Ukrainian. So I didn't anyone to misinterpret my intent and think I was judging how patriotic anyone was based on their answer... if that makes sense :)
@@TheNewTravel yes, you did the right thing. I myself am a Ukrainian who used to speak Russian and after big russian invasion I speak Ukrainian. However, I'm just interested in sociological surveys, particularly in the middle of my country - it gives an understanding of the current situation in society. And the issue of language is important for us, but I agree that it is better to choose another moment for such interviews, especially from a foreigner. After all, we have to deal with this internally without bringing it to public view. So thank you for your position.
@@TheNewTravel ¿Sabías que los portugueses entienden perfectamente el español?
Johannesburg would definitely beat Cape Town
How do you say 'friend' in Dutch - probably something long and complicated.
Dutch: Vriend (V pronounced as F) 😂
😂😂
@@TheNewTravel Dutch is one of the closest languages to English, It's true some words are totally different but most are actually similar because of the same roots.
My Mom comes from Amsterdam and she learned Dutch, German, French and English at school. My parents immigrated to South Africa and added Afrikaans to the list. She can honestly speak 5 languages. That lady from South Africa who spoke Xhosa, Zulu and a few more languages 🎉 You should go there. It's true!!
I'm not necessarily surprised with Amsterdam. It's a very international city and most Dutch can speak English. It's also very common for the Dutch to know German. Maybe visit a city like Cape Town, Johannesburg, or Kuala Lumpur. You'll be amazed.
Great concept! Keep it going. Come visit Dublin for your research if you ever get a chance
Thank you for this amazing video!!! I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!!! Seriously, this is my comfort soul-food! Thanks so much for all the effort and enthusiasm you put in your videos!
Appreciate the kind words my friend
same for me tbh!!!
Actually you can come to cities in Asia like Hong Kong and Singapore as well aside from Europe/Western-centric cities. The majority of Hong Kong people are trilinguals, which consists of Cantonese, Mandarin and English. And many of them can speak one more language which could possibly be Japanese, Korean. Just an advice :)
border regions will deffo speak more languages, Im from Alsace france, and if you went to somewhere like Strasbourg, most middle age+ people will speak French, German and Alsatian, and the young will speak French German and English, foreigners who have settled usually speak French, German, English and their own language too, its a very linguistically rich area
I definitely think as you go to more places you’ll find that first place number change, because as the girl in Amsterdam said people in Southern Africa can speak many languages.
The Gauteng Province of South Africa (where Johannesburg is located) is easily the most multilingual place I've visited. Cape Town was also incredibly linguistically diverse, although maybe slightly less the Joburg
@@brennanconway3728 the question is how many non local languages do they speak (= actively learned new ones, not just speak kind of bits and pieces of the languages they are grown up with). I also noticed that many make the mistake to believe that if a country has many official languages that all people speak all official languages. but thats mostly untrue ...
The videos are about which languages can people speak and not which languages does @@publicminx love
As a Montrealer I'm glad to see we came ahead of Toronto; but for sure both cities given Canada's immigration policy have a multitude of languages.
Friends = vrienden. And what surprised me, coming from The Netherlands (close to Amsterdam) and speaking 4 languages (and learning 6 more), was your Harvard video!
As an introvert that lives alone, i barely ever travel and go on vacations. So thank you for doing that for me and letting me learn about languages and cultures of other countries 😊
you must have a lot of savings haha
@@shngain100 why would I? I just spend my money on other things
I love your videos!! I don't know how many times repeated your videos.!! In particular, my best point is that it is seen the interviewee's background through the videos. I am interested in Asian people's results. I think the results for the Japanese will be interesting, and will not be what you might expect. I want to listen to your the analysis.
I think a lot of people generally understand more languages than they speak, as many languages are related. As a Norwegian for example, it is my mother tongue. Still, Norwegian are two separate official languages both taught in school, and I can speak both (although much is similar between the two), in addition I understand Swedish and Danish perfectly, and can speak them with a strong accent. Then English of course, including Scottish English, and pretty basic spoken German (understanding written German much better). Knowing English, German and Scandinavian, written Dutch is fairly easy to understand.
I think you will find the same thing in southern Europe, Italians, Portugese and Spaniards, and in part the French, can fairly easily understand eachother as they are all Latin languages (although the French made a right mess of Latin). In general, I think people learn easier the more uninhibited and exposed to a language they are, and the younger you are, the easier it is.
This ranking completely surprised!!! Especially not seing Montréal and Harvard campus at the top of list. I imagined a top 5 at the beginning of the video, but didint get one single place right ahahhaah - I put Amsterdam and Brussels in it, but in a different order.
It would be interesting to see a ranking of the cities by (number of distinct languages)/(number of people interviewed)
YOU warm my heart.
🐢This has been a great journey! I was pleasantly surprised with Montreal beating Paris, putting the latter to hang around in the North American cities party hahah I loved the South African girls and the Moroccan polyglot too.
The results were interesting. Nevertheless, you have to draw a distinction between number of languages spoken at an individual scale and total numbers of foreign language speakers. It would be interesting to see up to what degree this corresponds. Of course, the second figure would be a matter of consulting official figures (up to the existing degree) which doesn't give room for an attractive video. It would be intersting to see which is likely to be most international place in these regards.
Something to bear in mind is also the real language level in the different languages. People in the Netherlands, the Scandinavian and Baltic countries tend to have an amazing level of English. In Germany it is already a bit lower in terms of correctness and it goes down accordingly in France and Spain for example. Quite often people don't really have the language knowledge they claim to have, as we could see in the video at times.
hey, do you live in the USA ?
@@Browne7100 You are right. Many native speakers butcher their language. And it's also true that we Westerners are too self-centred. The video sequence is limited to places in the Western world and English should be seen as just one language more.
@@Browne7100 If I was pointing out that the level of language expertise counts as well, then it was to point out that it is already quite an achievement to speak only one foreign language at a high level. Sometimes we forget about that when counting foreign languages. Even though, I speak five at between intermediate and advanced levels.
Absolutely. I find it dubious at best that a city like London would score higher than Montreal, a city where both French and English are widely spoken and where a good proportion of the population is truly fluent in both languages.
Very interesting! I asked a similar question on Facebook a while back and got several answers like "I speak English and don't need to learn anything else."
I'm not surprised that Amsterdam was at the top of this list. Dutch people are REALLY good with languages! I've never been, but I'd love to go there one day
I hope you go visit Istanbul. I am not at all surprised that Amsterdam did so well.
Go to Finland see how many languages Finn’s speak
Bummer that zero guy dragged Toronto down 😂
it's all fun and games until the leaderboard comes out 😂
Toronto does not use the 2 official languages of Canada . why ?
I would have said Amsterdam, and my instinct was right.
Places with more than one official language have naturally higher sores (Brussels, Barcelona), surprising Montreal didn't do better.
I live in California. I speak English and Spanish, just like millions of Californians. Still , California has many who speak, Chinese, Hmong, Hindi and many more. I was surprised of your Montreal video, of how many people who speak Spanish.
Onde tem muitos migrantes as pessoas falam muitas línguas devido a convivência com estrangeiros .
Kind of can’t count a bit. I speak a bit of German but I’d never even mention it as a language. I speak Spanish fluently and French very well but I would say « a bit » in French. Even though I’m very confident in French.
10:02 Yeah, Queens is LITERALLY the most diverse place in the whole world, not just the US! Look it up if you don’t believe me. You definitely should go next time you’re in NYC
Great video! But your sample is a little skewed lol 😂
what do you mean by skewed ?
@@slmanmohamed probably because of there being a lot of tourists in big cities he's visited instead of just locals and since tourists will generally speak a minimum of 2 languages if they agree to be recorded: their native language + english or french to be able to understand him?
@@rice-a-roni yeah ok,
Are you fluent in English?
@slmanmohamed Yes, English is my first language & I'm a Spanish heritage speaker. It was like 4am, though, so my grammar was really bad in that last comment 😭
@@rice-a-roni i'm not asking about your bad grammar 😂, i wanted to ask : is english that hard ?
cuz i'm learning english sense 2 years and i still can't speak it like a native speaker
i started to feel that i waste these 2 years for nothing
You should also try Valletta in Malta. Most Maltese are trilingual - Maltese (98%), English (95%) and Italian (66%), but also most can also understand Arabic because Maltese is basically a dialect of Arabic written in Latin script. French is also spoken by about 20% of the population.
I would prob say brussels. I remember that most people said they spoke 2 or 3 languages.
Oh wow 3rd on the list not bad 😁
Statistically this makes a lot of sense. Counties with their own distinct native language bordering major countries with a different language will of course speak more languages. If you factor in the geographic size of the country it explains why European countries are at the top and north american at the bottom.... Montreal is unique because its in North America but you could argue its an island within French Quebec within English Canada.
Canada has 2 official languages french and english ... there are french canadians across Canada , not only in Quebec ....you are ignorant .why english Canada does not speak the 2 official languages ?
@@jeanbolduc5818 huh? I never said Canada only has one language. I was making a point about why Montreal is so unique in North American. LOL! I love how you’re upset I said English Canada but not upset that I said French Quebec. Quebec had two official languages same as Canada. Why don’t French Quebecers speak English??
Luxembourg (city) should be very high, almost everybody speaks French and German, the indigenous ones also speak Luxembourgish and there is a big community of Portuguese (20% of the country population). Add English to the mix and almost everybody speaks 3 languages, many speak 4. Dutch is also present as Luxembourg (country) is part of Benelux.
ive been to lux and only heard french and only about 2/10 people answered me in german
and Switzerland
I expected Brussels to be 1st with Amsterdam a close 2nd, but Prague surprised me
Yeah I think Prague ended up higher than it should have. What i mean by that is when I was filming the video, I approached a number of people who only spoke Czech and very, very little English. But none of them agreed to be in the video lol. So in the end, the Prague number is quite a bit higher than reality I think
As a German, it doesn't come as a surprise that Amsterdam ranks #1 in this list. Many Dutch speak at least two languages besides Dutch, often English and German, on a really good level. Then add some Dutch interview partners who happen to have learned an additional language, and suddenly you got a winner.
In Europe it's similar in Scandinavia and Switzerland. Finns e.g. often speak Finnish, English and e.g. Swedish and German on a good level. Many Swiss on the other hand often speak German and French as mother tongue. Plus of course English, Italian and so on.
In many African countries people speak a lot of languages. So you have one (or more) official languages, then often a regional lingua franca and additionally local mother tongues. Often enough all these languages are not related to each other at all. So that's really impressive.
You need to do Asia and South America now.
Also, Zurich is a city that I think it can beat Amsterdam.
Geneva might be interesting for this.
Before watching the video, my guess is Brussels, Tangiers and Barcelona speak the most, followed by NYC and Montreal
Actually, I once read about a study that said Montreal was the city with the highest proportion of people who were able to speak at least 3 languages... in the world! Also, concerning your own survey, I think Montreal was a bit underrated in the sense that the level of bilingualism is so high in Montreal that Montrealers will only consider they speak a language if they are TRULY FLUENT in that language, whereas people who live in places that only have one official language are probably more likely to say they know how to speak a language even if they only know how to say a few words or sentences in that language without being truly fluent. That's my guess anyways. Because in reality, it doesn't make much sense for Paris to be about on par with Montreal when it comes to languages known because the level of bilingualism in Montreal is much, much higher than it is in Paris qualitatively speaking.
Could you ask people, if they prefer to watch foreign movies in dubbed version or with subtitles?
This is not the only interesting metric you could have reported. For example, in Montreal almost everyone spoke the same two languages (English and French), where in NYC there was a lot of diversity in the respondents' second language. Having read the title, I expected you to report on how many unique languages were spoken across the survey in each city.
It's more common to speak 3 languages in Montreal than just 2. French and English are almost always among these 3 since you need both in practice.
Honestly its very interesting but you also know that a lot of people declare themselves speakers of a language of which they know no more than the basics. You can tell when he ask them can you tell me something in that language. You can never tell who is really at least conversational in those languages. Also it would be interesting to only ask citizens of the city and not tourists.
Buddy, come to india, we have 23 languages, you can take us to the top, but don't go to Delhi, you will get Hindi and English in Common, explore Non-Hindi States where you might find 4 or 5 or even 10 languages
dont confuse the number of languages a country has with the people - almost no one in india speaks 23 languages. most speak their local language + english, some two - in rare cases three local languages + english.
Guessing Prague, since they sit between Western and Eastern Europe
What about flying to Papua New Guinea once? @The New Travel
Visit the island of Curaçao and ask them there!
You can’t include New York in this without going to literally the most diverse neighborhood in the world, Jackson heights queens. This visit will blow Amsterdam out the water. Try it!
Brussels
folx, you have to understand the scores. the difference between 3.4 and 3.1 for instance is quite low. thats even not one language different, also not a half language different, just like 1/3. another day, different spots and the scores could be different. another aspect is that smaller international cities with a packed inner city have a certain advantage over bigger cities which are more spread out. thats very likely why Prague has better results than expected. The reality is that Prague is for instance in the EF (English Proficiency Ranking of capital cities 2023) just like Brussels many rankings behind Berlin. Top are the Dutchies, Northern European and German speaking cities (Austria, Berlin). General rule: a French speaking population is usually BAD with other languages - just the newer generation started to be more open. This means in the case of Brussels that THIS is the reason why Brussels (even being the Euro capital with many institutions) is here lower than expected. The Dutch/German speaking population is the one which is better with English. Similar is true for Switzerland. The country ranks much lower than his 'capital' Bern' . Why? Because its party in the German speaking region (but Zurich is better than Bern because it is fully in the German speaking part). Surprisingly good for this English proficiency ranking is btw. Sofia. Not surprising but exactly how I said here is that Paris is far behind many other cities. Back in the 20. century countries like France, Spain, Portugal did not travel much and were mostly monolingual and had a bubble life in difference to the German speaking ones/Netherlands, Scandinavia etc. which is also a reason why they are better with languages/English (not just due to the linguistic relation to English as West Germanic languages). After the end of the cold war and with the raising mobility/internet usage/globalization the younger generation became more open minded but some evolved faster. There are for instance many countries which started with disadvantages due to being on the Eastern side yet evolved faster with English. Portugal turned from quite monolinguistic to a significant better English speaking country than France (of course smaller countries with a in relation bigger impact on internationals have often certain advantages/more flexibility). Not surprising is the result of Amsterdam. Here everything fits: the Dutch are also in the Efi Ranking Nr. 1. They are traditionally similar to the Germany travelers since a long time, on the other hand quite open for migrants (also partly due to their colonial connections), are geologically as medium country placed at a beneficial spot, had a quite open university system for internationals (now questioned from the politics due to the mass), they had to adapt more often to neighbor countries languages (than the bigger neighbors), Amsterdam has in relation many tourists on a in relation smaller innner city (as pointed out) and so on. This means: in difference to Brussels or Czech, if one just asked natives then the Dutchies were still on a very good spot and still likely Nr. 1 while some others had different positions. In the case of London and the American Cities its understandable that with English - the global default language of the planet since the 21. century - have for most people less need to learn another language. The situation in the US was even far worse if there were not that many Spanish speakers - because most of the masses of the old migrations (which started much sooner in the US - if you asked this question in the beginning of the 20. century thoughout most big cities the result were much better than in most European cities, because most were more homogenized while cities like NY etc. had still much more different migrant bubbles which were not fully americanized). Another aspect is that in the US you move around in a huge English speaking region and one of the just two neighbors (Canada) is also just mostly English speaking. Not surprising that there is for most ppl no need to learn more - and lets face it: most people act pragmatic with languages, because they have also other interests.
People from the us should learn more languages. I think they’re always assuming that everyone knows English. It’s also a completely different thing to talk to someone on their native language instead of always talking in English.
If you went to Queens NYC, the average would be much much higher. It's accurately named the world's borough for a reason.
Especially the Jamaica/Hollis/ Jackson Heights area
are you from the us ??
@@kris5885Jamaica queens all you see blacks criminals losers killing no money doing drugs💀💀
Jackson Heights wow
USA is xenophobic .... english is the only language spoken unless you are an immigrant living in a ghettos like in Toronto( China, India)
A very interesting investigation. However, little conclusions can be drawn from it :
1. As you mention, people with whom you don't share any language in common are not interviewed which increases the score of all cities outside the anglosphere;
2. Also, it's self assesment and non English speakers tend to underestimate their proficiency in English since the level they need to achieve is essential for work while English speakers tend to overestimate their knowledge of foreign language since they don't need it. This increases the score inside the anglosphere;
3. The number of languages known is not anyhow related to how good people are with languages since some pairs like Catalan and Spanish are very close while, let's say Spanish and Basque have no genetic relationship;
4. Often outside Europe and North America, indigenous languages are considered, sadly often by their native speakers, as dialects and discarded as languages (while they really are languages);
These are fun videos, thanks! But more educational about languages and geography than about statistics and research methodology. 😂 Yes, please do go to South Africa, and also to Nigeria, and above all to India. My money is on Mumbai to kick everybody's ass!
Go to Baltic countries, they will have at least 3 languages or more. Especially to Estonia
I predicted the top 5, although not in the right order!
Well done!
Luxembourg would be by far number 1 in this list.
👏👍
In dutch friend is vriend
Go to finland
Parisians CAN speak English, they just don't WANT to speak English 😂
Many people have said that. They want you to speak french to them
You should go to Albania. People there speak at least 3 languages and some speak up to 6.
I’m gonna go ahead and guess Brussels without having watched the video yet. Let’s see if I’m right.
I think Lisbon could be higher if you only talked to Portuguese people. Most Portuguese people can speak Portuguese, English and Spanish.
How learn english fast ?.
As for Lisbon, almost everybody speak 2 ou 3 (most of us 3 and a great amount speak 4). If you go to a city and you just interview foreigners (anglophone people, which, for the most part, speak just 1), that isn't accurate!
What does speaking actually mean though? I've met many Portuguese speakers and yes they are among the best speakers of English. However I've never met one who could speak better French than me, and my French is awful
@@andybliss5965 yep, same thing with Spanish. Many of them claim to speak Spanish, but they don't know more than the basics, at least in my experience.
Brussels - mostly everyone speaks a minimum of 3
Pity there wasn't Finland. I bet it would've been top 10. Maybe top 5.
Go to Africa? it would be really interesting for all of us
NYC
Do tunisia ❤️
language - langwitch
uage - witch
wich - witch
which - witch
witch - witch
swedish :
En man sitter bakom en man och manen kammar manen med en kvist
" änn mann sittär bakam än maan akk mannän kammar manän med änn enkvist "
A man is sitting behind a mane and the man combes the mane with a juniper twig.
Finnish - English - Swedish ;
kertoisinkohan
I ponder if I shall tell
Jag funderar på om jag skall berätta
; )
The Winners should be the scandinavian Capitals.
I am fluent in 4 languages being Polish, so count me in Krakow :)
Luxembourg City would be in the top
go survey asia africa south america how many immigrant vs regional languages
Bro, how long did it take you to make this video? Lol. I imagine you had to rewatch every single video and do the calculations.
@0:31 seconds, if someone says “Habari yako?” Respond with “Safi!” or “Poa!” instead of mzuri and you’ll sound less like a tourist! 😉 🇰🇪
I expected paris or London for the first rank.
England thinks the world should speak english ....do not expect native british to speak a second language
Of course Montrealers are more multilinguals since they speak both official languages of Canada , french and english, plus their native language ( worldwide communities) ,whereasToronto is unilingual english ,most immigrants are from Asia , Hong kong or India , 2 british colonies ( english ). Do not try to speak french in Toronto , no one will understand you in a Canada with 2 official languages ( french and english ). Montreal is the best city in north america a mix of New York, France and London .
🇰🇪❤❤❤
🎉
I am a Prague local whos obsessed with the Netherlands and used to be obsessed with Germany. And we beat Brussels, heck yeah. This just made my day.
Edit: more with their languages, not the countries themselves
Try Russian cities, not much bilinguals/multilinguals there
my swiss friend can sepeak 6languages😹😭
Ummm is Africa in any of yoyr plans...just asking ?
Afica is a continent , not a country
First I win. (ignore the thex ad sites)
This whole idea that americans cannot speak anything else than english is very biased. Of course you can kind of erase english nowadays because most people speak it. Most people in europe only speak their native language and some degree of english. Of course you encounter places like Barcelona and Ukraine where a lot of people speak 2 native languages. But if you go to germany, france, italy most people will only speak native + english and sometimes not even english.
Surprised to see New York City and Toronto not ranked higher considering how international those cities are. Something tells me that the tourists who were interviewed may have slightly inflated Paris and Barcelona’s total though 😅 I think one city that I’ve been to that might give Amsterdam a run for their money would be Singapore with four official languages there.
New York City is all about killing and drugs war and gangs war real hood shit broke ass niggas with no money 😂😂
Canada has 2 official languages , french and english .... Montreal is the only bilingual big city in Canada ( 5 million people) ,,,, and Montreal is a multicultural metropolis like New York or Toronto ... Toronto is unilingual ( english ) for work and life , Montreal is both english and french .... no need to have a master degree to understand this fact
come to egypt and you'll see what makes you amazed
Why didn't you go to the Asian countries and ask them "how many languages do you speak?"
I still plan to! Though some places like Japan could be difficult due to lack of English speakers
@@TheNewTravel Hongkong or Malaysia would be interesting to ask :)
Hong Kong people moved to Vancouver and Toronto ... no need to go to Hong Kong@@mirae9163
In European cities lots of tourists and gests who know many languages. Almost everyone person who lived in post-sovet countries know two language, native, and langwidge country of occupant (USSR. Iit`s russian).
This isn’t ‘official’ at all. It’s just a perception based on some random people you interviewed. For example, over 600 languages are spoken in New York City whereas 200 are spoken in London. European cities for the most part speak their native languages + English, and that doesn’t really mean anything. Same goes to Montreal, where most people speaks English and French, that doesn’t mean a lot of languages are spoken in the city. New York City, Toronto, Miami, London, Los Angeles, those are the actual winners
official was said with max possible sarcasm
@@TheNewTravel You still had your entire list wrong
Montreal is a world class and multicultural metropolis ( 5 million people ) and people speak both official languages of CAnada , french and english in order to work and live , plus people speak their native language. Montreal has communities from all over the world . Toronto is unilingual in english ( people do not speak french in Toronto for work ) and mainly asian from China ( Hong Kong )and India , 2 british colonies ... and english
you need to chill down and enjoy the fun experience he had in a great topic: languages. What you said (# of languages spoken) is different from what he's proposing (% of languages per people) and he never claimed it to be official or scientific.
Also, cities in the Angloshpere will never have a population that can speak more languages than in countries which everyone speaks their language(s) + English.