Language ban in Slovakia

[Viking]

Mutual intelligability exists on multiple levels, the level at various periods between Scandanavia and England is instructive, as is the level within England. In both cases, I believe it depended on how far and often you traveled, but unity only comes with a written standard. When that was achieved in Norway I'm not sure, but it can't be before Cnut started using English missionaries to convert the populace.

Yep, but otherwise Hungarian is mutually intellibigle with Slovakian, dragging Scandinavian into this does not become quite as apt. As HT said, lingual unity has not yet been achieved in Norway (even if you exclude the Sami), neither spoken nor written. As I said though, I'm pretty certain that the unity was much greater in the Viking age, both written and spoken. After the Black Death, Norwegian as a written standard gradually went pretty much extinct. As the language got resurrected in its written form in the 1800ds; two competing variants arose, and both still exist today (one is closest to mentioned western Norwegian, other to eastern Norwegian).

Point is: not all countries of today came to an apparent lingual unity via discriminating minorities.

[Beskar]

Should just adopt English as the official second language. Would solve all the problems everywhere.

[Brenus]

“Brenus - English spouse” with Irish origin!!!!

[Major Robert Dump]

Tourists in Slovakia? LAWL

[HoreTore]

The US built itself by enforcing the WASP ideal over the various newcomers.

Integrating the italian immigrants was a pain, nobody speaks french anymore except in some parts of the Maine and Louisiana and I doubt anyone would say that latinos' integration into the national community is a huge success so far.

I'd suggest you read how french as a language was wipped off the face of the British colonies/the newborn US. It wasn't 'hey dude, I know you have your own language, but you know speaking english would be cool too', but more among the lines of 'French is banned, period.' I'm not even going into the whole irish situation, the japanese and chinese cases and so on.

Of course, things are different now, because banning spanish or openly discriminating the latinos would be foolish, but if you think the US were built as a multicultural state, you're fooling yourself.

I'm sorry, I missed that one.

But anyway, I'll take your US failure and raise you....

Switzerland.

Beat that.

[Papewaio]

Yes, but between France and Australia its the latter that is by far the more monocultural country.

France has twice the number of non-Westerners. France's white immigrant population is far more diverse than Australia's too, owing to more diverse immigration. And the French of French stock are among the most diverse of Europe too.

It always seems to come as a surprise to people, but France has been a major immigration country for two centuries now. White French are more easily compared to a diverse population like the US than to countries that were mostly etnically homogenous up until around 1970, like Denmark, Portugal or Australia. The people that lived in France in 1800 are a minority nowadays.

Uphill battle for you.

25% of current Australians were born overseas (I'm Swedish/Welsh/English/Scottish/Irish/French born in Fiji).

Europeans didn't even settle within Australia until 1824. Only 2.6% of the Population is Aboriginal Australian or Torres Strait Island... that means since the 1800's 97% of the population is immigrant...

In Australia, your mixed marriage is an exception. Consider this:

Brenus - English spouse
TristusKhan - Egyptian girlfriend
Meneldil - native American Canadian girlfriend, who mercilessly bosses him around
Louis - Spanish soon-to-be-girlfriend

See?

I know the last part is a joke, but I love stats:
"Recent marriage patterns of overseas-born Australians There were 76,200 brides and 81,400 grooms born overseas in the three-year period 1996-98. Across all of these marriages, around 30 per cent, for both brides and grooms, were between partners in the same birthplace group. The other 70 per cent were mixed marriages, comprising about 30 per cent of marriages with long-time Australians and 40 per cent with other people from a different birthplace group. Overall, overseas-born brides were marginally more likely than overseas-born grooms to have married within their birthplace group."

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Recent marriage patterns of second-generation Australians There were more marriages of second-generation brides (88,100) and grooms (86,600) than there were of overseas-born people in the same three-year period. Marriage patterns among this group differed from those of overseas-born people. These differences were more marked for some birthplace groups than for others.
A larger proportion of these marriages (80 per cent each of brides and grooms) were mixed marriages than was the case for overseas- born people. These mixed marriages were evenly divided between those marrying long-time Australians and those marrying other people outside their birthplace group. For nearly every birthplace group listed, second-generation Australians had a greater propensity to marry long-time Australians than did overseas-born Australians. Exceptions were brides from the Philippines, where the proportion was much lower, and brides and grooms from New Zealand, where the proportions were slightly lower. For some birthplace groups, notably Viet Nam, China, the Federal Republic of Germany, India, Hong Kong, Poland, and the Former Yugoslav Republic, this difference was very marked. In addition, over half of second-generation brides and grooms with at least one parent born in New Zealand, Viet Nam, China, Philippines, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong or Poland, married someone from a different birthplace group other than a long-time Australian. For all of these birthplace groups the proportion doing so was much greater than for the corresponding group of overseas-born people.

http://www.entrenous.com.au/articles..._australia.pdf