Martin Bienwald wrote:
Cesar Neri wrote:

I don't think you can just make a sweeping generalization like that. Even in
Europe, it all depends on what country and what region we are talking about.
For example, on a trip to Bavaria many years ago, I took the Brenner pass
from Austria and ended up in a town in Italy near the border with
Austra/Germany. In this town, all the signs were in 2 languages and everyone
was bilingual. This town was Bolzano/Bozen and in this town bilingual
definitely meant being able to speak Italian and German/Austrian. So, this
is at least one example in Europe where, similar to the US, the word
bilingual referred to 2 specific languages.

I think that would be the case in most places with more than one official
or "default" language. I guess in Brussels "bilingual" would mostly refer
to Dutch/French, for example.

Brussels has an annoying way of doing it where the sign for a street is
in one language or the other, not both. So you are looking for "Rue de
Ghent" and when you get to it the sign says "Klixpacqtynstraat."

I'd expect that it refers to English/French in at least some parts of Canada.

Yes, of course. English/Chinese in Hong Kong. English/Japanese in
Japan. English/Korean in South Korea. Portuguese/Spanish in parts of
Spanish-speaking Latin America that do a lot of trade with Brazil.
English/Arabic in Dubai. French/Arabic in Morocco or Tunisia.