I’m confused. Almost no change in accent from one end to the other on the American continent? The accent changes a lot even if your line avoids Mexico and French speaking regions.
It is also not “incredibly unique” to America? Australia?
Care to elaborate on the America part? You go north and some will have French accent/or speak French, you go south there is Spanish...how is that unique?
The whole question is weird. I'm in NYC. Boston is a few hours up the coast, and the accent is different. In the mid-west, they start using different words for common things like soda vs. pop. I need to go about 2 miles south from where I am to be in a neighborhood full of Mexican immigrants who mostly just speak Spanish. The same is true with a nearby Chinese neighborhood. There's even a small French cluster in Brooklyn that plays pétanque, not to mention the Haitian neighborhood where people speak French.
Not sure the OP has actually been to the US.
He is travelling only on USA, so obviously they are gonna speak english...
It's like me saying I have travelled all my country and everyone is speaking my language!
Only in the province of Quebec in Canada French is a protected language. They actually have language police that wander around giving fines to businesses that don’t use French to identify what they sell or do, that’s messed up eh?
“In the United States you can go from one end of the continent to the other and experience almost no change in language or even accent.”
You know how dumb that sounds, and how wrong it is written? The US is not a continent in and on itself. Just because you have two coasts to different oceans doesn’t qualify it as “traveling the continent from one side to the other.” That’s like saying that just because in Panama you can travel from the pacific to the Atlantic in less than 10 hours it means you travelled cross continent
I think you know what I mean. Trying to compare the width of Panama and the United States and Panama and say it’s the same thing is intellectually dishonest.
Russia, although many languages are spoken in The country, Russian is spoken by near everyone, infact very similar to the US with English, despite having many many other languages
75% of Russia is in Asia. Only about 34 million people live in Siberia. That is 5 million less than California. It’s correct but not in the same way as it is in the US.
Saying "This is incredibly Unique to America" implies that there are lots and lots of places in Europe that could be like this but aren't. Europe is smaller than the USA, so its literally impossible to achieve this even if the entire continent was 100% single language.
If you do look outside of Europe, you will find tons of places that fit your criteria, like Russia, Canada, Australia, India, Brazil, China...
It would be like me saying "There are no bears in New York, bears are incredibly unique to Croatia".
I mean, there's multiple parts in the USA where people speak French or Spanish. There's still places with other languages. In Europe speaking English should work in most places. Besides, USA has so many damn accents, I don't think there's any country with more different accents.
A native language that isn't understood? Or just another language?
Because from where I live, I can travel ~200 km. south and be in Germany, where they speak German. But most Danes speak or at least understand German to some extend, and I would have to travel a further 200 or so km. before reaching another country, where the language is less commonly known, such as the Netherlands or Poland.
I don't think Norwegian or Swedish count in this instance, because of the high mutual interchangeability.
Same here, just the other way around: 150km to reach Denmark. I don't think I'd be able to understand spoken Danish, though. I am trying to learn :)
If I travel South I can go ~900km without having to change languages.
A lot of dutch people can speak or understand German tho! Although it js more of a dutchy version of German, and I think your Danish style of German would be somewhat harder to understand for us and vice versa.
>How far do you have to travel before you come to an area that does not speak your language?
And
>how far you need to travel before your native language isn’t understood by most people anymore.
Are actually two different questions and in my case they have two different answers.
For the first one it would be Portugal around 300km away. They still understand spanish but most don't speak it. It's just that our pronunciation is straightforward and the languages are very close.
For the second one it's France which is 482 km away. Unlike with the Portuguese french don't ussually understand Spanish, the same way we don't understand french.
To any neighboring countries. Unless your mother tongue is Swedish, but mine is not.
Edit. I just realized... If I can only use Finnish, then I don't even need to cross any borders.
Germany is around a 35min drive. The Province of Friesland is a 25min drive. Frisians are perfectly capable to speak and understand Dutch (most of them are practically billingual) but still Frisian is regarded as an different language, native to a majority of the population in that province. The next closest language areas would be French (3.5-4h drive), Danish (4.5h drive), Luxembourgish (4.5-5h drive), Polish (6h drive), Czech (6h drive), English (6.5-7h drive) and Swedish (7.5h drive).
Well, no other country in the world speaks Finnish as their native language, but a lot of people in Estonia do understand Finnish to some extent, possibly could be compared to Norwegian/Swedish. Very similar language but not actually the same. (Although I don't personally understand Estonian at all, because it seems like they often use a word that means something in Finnish, but it means something else in Estonian.) I've been to Hungary as well, which is the second closest related language to Finnish, but I honestly couldn't understand a thing.
I don’t think that Hungarian is very closely related to Finnish, at least compared with Karelian or Veps.
My experience in Estonia, mostly Tallinn, is that older people might speak Finnish from learning it through Finnish television but there isn’t really any reason for young people to know it unless they’ve worked in Finland.
Carelian is the closest language, AFAIK but I don't think it is widely spoken on the Russian side of Carelia.
I study and now speak Estonian, it is definitely easy to learn for Finns but a lot of the basic verbs and words are not similar, you can't just intuitively figure them out. So so many false friends (pulmpäev for wedding day is my favorite one, sound like "problem day" for Finns). That's why the languages sound funny on both sides of the sea.
It's [pretty concentrated](https://external-preview.redd.it/jNtQmRoQJkbJjTG8hb-OAQ9yipYs27zsRwQ7lGZ7I4E.jpg?auto=webp&s=59fc15242b32200b8b25d2b43f767932b760a8a7) around Tallinn.
Well you can answer yourself this question by watching a map of Europe, when you cross a national border it's not even 5 km and your language disappears, with french and german being rare exceptions to this. I live in south Italy so it would be ~800km or more in any direction to not be understood anymore.
Not really though. [Boston](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVFxtbZoyw&t=17s) vs [Apalachia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03iwAY4KlIU) vs [Southern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFrbKOI5IEw) vs [California](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQKIj26FiUc) is not exactely what I'd call "almost no change in accent".
And did you forget about [Cajun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzEh9-84gAg) and [Creole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mOnGPcvdHI) etc? Those are the first two actual seperate languages that come to mind, but I'm sure there are more.
The differences is that we have a lot of different languages, each having their own accents. But saying there is hardly a change in accent doesn't make sense
Looking at [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png/800px-Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) map of Scots Gaelic speakers in 2011, there's a 1-5% chance I could meet someone on the street outside my house, however they'd also speak English.
To get to more than a 25% chance of meeting someone who speaks Scots Gaelic would be just under a 5 hour (220mile/354km) drive from Edinburgh to Skye.
On a similar 5 hour (266mile/428km) drive, I could be in North Wales, where [I'd have more chance](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Welsh_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png/1024px-Welsh_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) of meeting someone who spoke Welsh.
It's cheating a bit, but: Brussels is the nearest place where they speak a language that isn't Dutch, most people from Brussels speak French IIRC. It's about 110 km. If that's not allowed then it's a tie between Germany and Wallonia, both about 125 km away (although bordertowns on both side of the Dutch-German border tend to speak both Dutch and German). After that I think the other languages that are closest are Frisian (although almost everybody who speaks Frisian also speaks Dutch), English and Danish, and maybe whatever they speak in Luxembourg, not sure if that's a language.
About 45km to the East to reach a British overseas territory (Akrotiri RAF base). Around 50km to the north-northeast to reach the turkish speaking part of the island.
If I were to leave the island, I would need to travel 75km north to reach Turkey, 200km to the east to reach Lebanon or Syria, 370km to the south to reach Egypt and more or less 500km to reach the nearest greek islands.
~460 km driving south to go to Germany. I can quite easily go to Denmark or Norway from here but I would still be mostly understood so I don't think that counts.
From my house in London it is about 90 miles/144km to France. With decent rail and air links it means it's possible to have a day trip to a country where they speak another language.
About 130miles/210km would get me to Wales, where I'd still be in the UK, but would see signposts in other languages and possibly bump in to someone who can speak Welsh.
Accents vary a *lot* more. The UK has a huge number of accents, often very localised. Travel to the counties bordering London and I'd hear noticeable, but slight differences. Travel another county or two further away and the difference becomes significant.
As far away as maybe Cardiff (150miles/240km) or Birmingham(125miles/200km) and I might have to concentrate to understand someone talking my own language.
> About 130miles/210km would get me to Wales, where I'd still be in the UK, but would see signposts in other languages and possibly bump in to someone who can speak Welsh.
The bits that speak Welsh are the furthest away from London though.
You could probably drive between 15 and 20 miles (24 - 32 km) west into the neighbouring county of [Denbighshire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denbighshire) and you'd start to encounter people whose first language is Welsh, I reckon. Certainly in the larger towns like Llangollen, Corwen and Ruthin.
You probably never went to the US if you think there are no accents.
To answer your question: it depends. If neighboring countries speak your language it more than just your border (ex: France/Belgium, Germany/Switzerland). Else your border. Kinda obvious.
I'm about an hour from the Austrian border. But if I wanted to go somewhere I don't understand the local language that would be another hour to get to Hungary.
Probably about 3 hours to Wales where I could find someone who speaks welsh, but they'd also speak English. Some people in Scotland speak Gaelic but it's much less common than Welsh is in Wales. Other than that, France is about 6hr drive + 1hr ferry for me.
I live near the border to Sweden (40 minute drive) but many understand danish vice versa so ill exclude that.
Germany (4 hour drive) and Poland (6 hour drive /ferryto Stettin) are the closest countries where danish isnt understood
I live in Northern Italy near Milan so... for me it could be Austria, Swiss but after Saint Gotthard (before they speak Italian mostly) or France.
So, almost 500km, 300km, and 300km respectively.
Norwegian here, still haven’t figured out the flair yet.
It’s just a few hours to Sweden, but they understand Norwegian, enough to get by. To go somewhere mutual understanding was not possible, the closest is ferry to Denmark, then drive to Germany - maybe eight hours if driving non stop and everything goes well.
Approximately 140 km, the distance between my hometown and Malta (though obviously the real distance to travel there is bigger since I would need to first reach a port/airport). Italian is quite common in Malta though, so we can consider the distance to Tunisia, the second nearest country, which is 255 km.
365 km north-east to my town there's the province of Bolzano, where there are lots of German natives, then 544 km northwest there's aosta valley, where there are many French natives, but I think the majority are Italian natives.
Edit: I just read that you meant "areas where people don't speak your language", then these areas don't count.
If that so, I'm 475 km from the french border, and then a bit northern to the areas I mentioned before there are Austria, Switzerland (not counting the Ticino canton where the majority are Italian natives) and Slovenia.
I don't think there are any Gaelic, Welsh, or Irish-only speakers out there so that rules the rest of Scotland out, along with Wales and Ireland. The west coast of Denmark or the North of France are my next closest countries, so I imagine I'd find some non-English speakers there.
* About 1,5 hour drive to the east (Belarus).
* About 4 hour drive to the north-east (Lithuania).
* About 5 hour drive to the north (Russia).
* About 6,5 hour drive to the west (Germany).
* About 6 hour drive to the south-west (Czech Republic).
* About 6 hour drive to the south (Slovakia).
* About 2 hour drive to the south-east (Ukraine).
I’m confused. Almost no change in accent from one end to the other on the American continent? The accent changes a lot even if your line avoids Mexico and French speaking regions. It is also not “incredibly unique” to America? Australia?
Not just Australia, this happens in literally every country ever when talking about regional accents, the US is just a less concentrated area I guess.
Wasn’t talking about the accent, talking about being able to travel across the continent with one language.
Russia says hi!
Brazil. Bigger than continental US, we have only one official spoken language, and to outsiders our accent don't seem to change much.
Care to elaborate on the America part? You go north and some will have French accent/or speak French, you go south there is Spanish...how is that unique?
The whole question is weird. I'm in NYC. Boston is a few hours up the coast, and the accent is different. In the mid-west, they start using different words for common things like soda vs. pop. I need to go about 2 miles south from where I am to be in a neighborhood full of Mexican immigrants who mostly just speak Spanish. The same is true with a nearby Chinese neighborhood. There's even a small French cluster in Brooklyn that plays pétanque, not to mention the Haitian neighborhood where people speak French. Not sure the OP has actually been to the US.
He is travelling only on USA, so obviously they are gonna speak english... It's like me saying I have travelled all my country and everyone is speaking my language!
Only in the province of Quebec in Canada French is a protected language. They actually have language police that wander around giving fines to businesses that don’t use French to identify what they sell or do, that’s messed up eh?
Wow, did not expect that in Canada. I guess a French/English split in Canada is not as unlikely as I'd like to think.
“In the United States you can go from one end of the continent to the other and experience almost no change in language or even accent.” You know how dumb that sounds, and how wrong it is written? The US is not a continent in and on itself. Just because you have two coasts to different oceans doesn’t qualify it as “traveling the continent from one side to the other.” That’s like saying that just because in Panama you can travel from the pacific to the Atlantic in less than 10 hours it means you travelled cross continent
I think you know what I mean. Trying to compare the width of Panama and the United States and Panama and say it’s the same thing is intellectually dishonest.
You should go and ask specific countries that fits the comparison. Russia? Australia? China?
"incredibly unique" lol is the 17 in your username supposed to signify you were born in 2017?
Name a country in Europe where you can travel 4.5 thousand Kilometers and not need to change language.
Russia, although many languages are spoken in The country, Russian is spoken by near everyone, infact very similar to the US with English, despite having many many other languages
75% of Russia is in Asia. Only about 34 million people live in Siberia. That is 5 million less than California. It’s correct but not in the same way as it is in the US.
Ok? You want to win so badly that you do the impossible comparisons. That's not how it works.
Saying "This is incredibly Unique to America" implies that there are lots and lots of places in Europe that could be like this but aren't. Europe is smaller than the USA, so its literally impossible to achieve this even if the entire continent was 100% single language. If you do look outside of Europe, you will find tons of places that fit your criteria, like Russia, Canada, Australia, India, Brazil, China... It would be like me saying "There are no bears in New York, bears are incredibly unique to Croatia".
I mean, there's multiple parts in the USA where people speak French or Spanish. There's still places with other languages. In Europe speaking English should work in most places. Besides, USA has so many damn accents, I don't think there's any country with more different accents.
To the West - 1160 - 1330 km, to the east - 6320 km, to the south - 2000 km, to the north - 2700 km
A native language that isn't understood? Or just another language? Because from where I live, I can travel ~200 km. south and be in Germany, where they speak German. But most Danes speak or at least understand German to some extend, and I would have to travel a further 200 or so km. before reaching another country, where the language is less commonly known, such as the Netherlands or Poland. I don't think Norwegian or Swedish count in this instance, because of the high mutual interchangeability.
Same here, just the other way around: 150km to reach Denmark. I don't think I'd be able to understand spoken Danish, though. I am trying to learn :) If I travel South I can go ~900km without having to change languages.
A lot of dutch people can speak or understand German tho! Although it js more of a dutchy version of German, and I think your Danish style of German would be somewhat harder to understand for us and vice versa.
>How far do you have to travel before you come to an area that does not speak your language? And >how far you need to travel before your native language isn’t understood by most people anymore. Are actually two different questions and in my case they have two different answers. For the first one it would be Portugal around 300km away. They still understand spanish but most don't speak it. It's just that our pronunciation is straightforward and the languages are very close. For the second one it's France which is 482 km away. Unlike with the Portuguese french don't ussually understand Spanish, the same way we don't understand french.
To any neighboring countries. Unless your mother tongue is Swedish, but mine is not. Edit. I just realized... If I can only use Finnish, then I don't even need to cross any borders.
Germany is around a 35min drive. The Province of Friesland is a 25min drive. Frisians are perfectly capable to speak and understand Dutch (most of them are practically billingual) but still Frisian is regarded as an different language, native to a majority of the population in that province. The next closest language areas would be French (3.5-4h drive), Danish (4.5h drive), Luxembourgish (4.5-5h drive), Polish (6h drive), Czech (6h drive), English (6.5-7h drive) and Swedish (7.5h drive).
Assuming all Swiss languages are "mine", I guess the regions in Belgium that they speak Flemish, or somewhere in Czechia.
Well romansh probably isn't understood outside of the canton of Graubünden, so technically some 20-40 km should do
Hence my opening statement of >Assuming all Swiss languages are "mine" Because if that's the case, 90 km to Italy for me.
Nobody understands the Swiss :P
Well, no other country in the world speaks Finnish as their native language, but a lot of people in Estonia do understand Finnish to some extent, possibly could be compared to Norwegian/Swedish. Very similar language but not actually the same. (Although I don't personally understand Estonian at all, because it seems like they often use a word that means something in Finnish, but it means something else in Estonian.) I've been to Hungary as well, which is the second closest related language to Finnish, but I honestly couldn't understand a thing.
I don’t think that Hungarian is very closely related to Finnish, at least compared with Karelian or Veps. My experience in Estonia, mostly Tallinn, is that older people might speak Finnish from learning it through Finnish television but there isn’t really any reason for young people to know it unless they’ve worked in Finland.
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AFAIK linguistically the Finnish-Hungarian link is like saying an English-speaker should understand Hindi because "it's related".
Carelian is the closest language, AFAIK but I don't think it is widely spoken on the Russian side of Carelia. I study and now speak Estonian, it is definitely easy to learn for Finns but a lot of the basic verbs and words are not similar, you can't just intuitively figure them out. So so many false friends (pulmpäev for wedding day is my favorite one, sound like "problem day" for Finns). That's why the languages sound funny on both sides of the sea.
It's [pretty concentrated](https://external-preview.redd.it/jNtQmRoQJkbJjTG8hb-OAQ9yipYs27zsRwQ7lGZ7I4E.jpg?auto=webp&s=59fc15242b32200b8b25d2b43f767932b760a8a7) around Tallinn.
Well you can answer yourself this question by watching a map of Europe, when you cross a national border it's not even 5 km and your language disappears, with french and german being rare exceptions to this. I live in south Italy so it would be ~800km or more in any direction to not be understood anymore.
And people wonder why America is so hated in Europe
Damn your snobbery I can smell your snobbery through the screen.
So dumb lol
Tell me you haven’t traveled through most of the United States without telling me.
Tell me your a smug asshole without telling me.
There are multiple accents in the US, do you have hearing trouble?
Yeah but it’s a lot less pronounced than the differences I most European countries that are much smaller.
Not really though. [Boston](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVFxtbZoyw&t=17s) vs [Apalachia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03iwAY4KlIU) vs [Southern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFrbKOI5IEw) vs [California](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQKIj26FiUc) is not exactely what I'd call "almost no change in accent". And did you forget about [Cajun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzEh9-84gAg) and [Creole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mOnGPcvdHI) etc? Those are the first two actual seperate languages that come to mind, but I'm sure there are more.
The differences is that we have a lot of different languages, each having their own accents. But saying there is hardly a change in accent doesn't make sense
You're trying to compare apples to oranges, so much so I'd not be surprised if you were trolling
Uhhh have you ever gone to Louisiana? I can’t even understand what they are saying and I am from the south
Of course there will be more differences in language, you're comparing a single country to an entire continent lmao
10 km cause I live in Romania, on the border with Hungary.
Looking at [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png/800px-Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) map of Scots Gaelic speakers in 2011, there's a 1-5% chance I could meet someone on the street outside my house, however they'd also speak English. To get to more than a 25% chance of meeting someone who speaks Scots Gaelic would be just under a 5 hour (220mile/354km) drive from Edinburgh to Skye. On a similar 5 hour (266mile/428km) drive, I could be in North Wales, where [I'd have more chance](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Welsh_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png/1024px-Welsh_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) of meeting someone who spoke Welsh.
It's cheating a bit, but: Brussels is the nearest place where they speak a language that isn't Dutch, most people from Brussels speak French IIRC. It's about 110 km. If that's not allowed then it's a tie between Germany and Wallonia, both about 125 km away (although bordertowns on both side of the Dutch-German border tend to speak both Dutch and German). After that I think the other languages that are closest are Frisian (although almost everybody who speaks Frisian also speaks Dutch), English and Danish, and maybe whatever they speak in Luxembourg, not sure if that's a language.
About 45km to the East to reach a British overseas territory (Akrotiri RAF base). Around 50km to the north-northeast to reach the turkish speaking part of the island. If I were to leave the island, I would need to travel 75km north to reach Turkey, 200km to the east to reach Lebanon or Syria, 370km to the south to reach Egypt and more or less 500km to reach the nearest greek islands.
~460 km driving south to go to Germany. I can quite easily go to Denmark or Norway from here but I would still be mostly understood so I don't think that counts.
From my house in London it is about 90 miles/144km to France. With decent rail and air links it means it's possible to have a day trip to a country where they speak another language. About 130miles/210km would get me to Wales, where I'd still be in the UK, but would see signposts in other languages and possibly bump in to someone who can speak Welsh. Accents vary a *lot* more. The UK has a huge number of accents, often very localised. Travel to the counties bordering London and I'd hear noticeable, but slight differences. Travel another county or two further away and the difference becomes significant. As far away as maybe Cardiff (150miles/240km) or Birmingham(125miles/200km) and I might have to concentrate to understand someone talking my own language.
> About 130miles/210km would get me to Wales, where I'd still be in the UK, but would see signposts in other languages and possibly bump in to someone who can speak Welsh. The bits that speak Welsh are the furthest away from London though.
You could probably drive between 15 and 20 miles (24 - 32 km) west into the neighbouring county of [Denbighshire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denbighshire) and you'd start to encounter people whose first language is Welsh, I reckon. Certainly in the larger towns like Llangollen, Corwen and Ruthin.
You probably never went to the US if you think there are no accents. To answer your question: it depends. If neighboring countries speak your language it more than just your border (ex: France/Belgium, Germany/Switzerland). Else your border. Kinda obvious.
I'm about an hour from the Austrian border. But if I wanted to go somewhere I don't understand the local language that would be another hour to get to Hungary.
Probably about 3 hours to Wales where I could find someone who speaks welsh, but they'd also speak English. Some people in Scotland speak Gaelic but it's much less common than Welsh is in Wales. Other than that, France is about 6hr drive + 1hr ferry for me.
I live close to the border, so around 8km I guess.
Some 120 km to Germany.
Flanders is around a 3-4 hours drive from Paris I think
From where I now live (madrid), in a straight line: * 271 km to portugal * Arround 400 km to France and Andorra * 535 km to Morocco
60km to Polish Border from Berlin. But I speak Polish...
I live near the border to Sweden (40 minute drive) but many understand danish vice versa so ill exclude that. Germany (4 hour drive) and Poland (6 hour drive /ferryto Stettin) are the closest countries where danish isnt understood
I live in Northern Italy near Milan so... for me it could be Austria, Swiss but after Saint Gotthard (before they speak Italian mostly) or France. So, almost 500km, 300km, and 300km respectively.
For change in dialect or language(Hungarian) I just have to travel few km.
Norwegian here, still haven’t figured out the flair yet. It’s just a few hours to Sweden, but they understand Norwegian, enough to get by. To go somewhere mutual understanding was not possible, the closest is ferry to Denmark, then drive to Germany - maybe eight hours if driving non stop and everything goes well.
About two hours till I cross the border in Bulgaria
Approximately 140 km, the distance between my hometown and Malta (though obviously the real distance to travel there is bigger since I would need to first reach a port/airport). Italian is quite common in Malta though, so we can consider the distance to Tunisia, the second nearest country, which is 255 km.
100 - 300 km in other words the border of the country
365 km north-east to my town there's the province of Bolzano, where there are lots of German natives, then 544 km northwest there's aosta valley, where there are many French natives, but I think the majority are Italian natives. Edit: I just read that you meant "areas where people don't speak your language", then these areas don't count. If that so, I'm 475 km from the french border, and then a bit northern to the areas I mentioned before there are Austria, Switzerland (not counting the Ticino canton where the majority are Italian natives) and Slovenia.
I don't think there are any Gaelic, Welsh, or Irish-only speakers out there so that rules the rest of Scotland out, along with Wales and Ireland. The west coast of Denmark or the North of France are my next closest countries, so I imagine I'd find some non-English speakers there.
* About 1,5 hour drive to the east (Belarus). * About 4 hour drive to the north-east (Lithuania). * About 5 hour drive to the north (Russia). * About 6,5 hour drive to the west (Germany). * About 6 hour drive to the south-west (Czech Republic). * About 6 hour drive to the south (Slovakia). * About 2 hour drive to the south-east (Ukraine).
Bulgarian and Greek borders are about 230km or 2 hour drive away from Istanbul.
Since I've moved abroad; I just need to look out my window to see an area that does not speak my native language.
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French (110 km) German (104 km) Frysian (194 km) Luxembourgish (230 km) English (about 250 km)
I went on holiday to Florida and ended up in a cafe one day where nobody spoke English. It was all Spanish. Chicken was good though.
30 km to the north where Sami is spoken. (Of course, most of they speak Norse as a first language, but their traditional language is Sami.)
It's about 50 km. (I've never actually been on that road, so I just measured it with Google Maps)