I had to laugh at the comments of a conductor on a train from Trier in Germany to Luxembourg City in, well Luxembourg. As she was trying to explain the ticketing structure to us in German, when that didn't work she switched to French.
Still, we couldn't explain in my limited German and she replied *so you only speak English” in a dismissive tone. Firstly, I live in Australia, a continent with an official language of English with each state speaking the same language so no need to change languages as you cross borders.
My partner who was with me at the time is a native Japanese speaker, she can also use some Chinese as some characters change over and I’m sure she could get the message across in Korean if needed.
Australia is 12,000 kilometers away from Europe so for the best part it makes no sense to learn German, French, Spanish or Italian unless a specific need arises. Due to our proximity to Asia; Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese or Indonesian would be the better option at any rate.
Even for someone such as myself living in Perth, to get in a car and drive across the state border will require about 12 hours of travelling time only to find they speak English there too.
Technically, Australia isn't a continent as the original inhabitants have around 2000 different languages or thereabouts. What I am not able to state is how many are in frequent use or how they differ between each dialect.
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