ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the language situation in a number of countries that officially recognize themselves as multilingual states. Many of these countries are situated outside the Western world, though there a few exceptions. Indeed, most EU member states officially recognize only one language, which is often directly linked to national identity: hence, the stereotyped generalizations that Italians speak Italian, Germans speak German, Danes speak Danish, etc., to the point where we have sometimes had students extending this (very European) assumption to other countries such as India and in all seriousness claiming that ‘Indians speak Indian’.
