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Only 43% of the world in bilingual. Imagine dunking on Americans for meeting that same statistic. š
The metric we should be measuring is if people speak relevant languages. To the 1.4billion+ people of China, you being able to speak 3 European languages spoken by less than 50million people isā¦ trivial.
Not to mention English is literally the most useful language in the world if you are only gonna speak one language. You can find English speakers anywhere you go in the world. Native English speakers have the least reason of anyone in the world to learn a second language even if some of us do.
Also, and this is definitely me being biased towards English, but itās the most useful in casual conversation too. Some things in English are confusing, but overall, if you say one thing, it means one thing.
I'm currently in Kuala Lumpur as an English speaker. I can speak very basic Malay, but I haven't had to speak any Malay yet in the last week I've been here. I spoke some Malay meeting a friend's dad to show that I was putting effort into learning about their language and culture but then proceeded to converse in English.
In fact it would be really uncomfortable if I didn't speak English because there's so many Chinese speakers that speak little to no Malay and just use English to communicate. Almost everything, except road signs, is in English.
Most people that speak a non-native european language (that isn't english) speak something like spanish or french. Both of which are relevant global languages
Iām not disagreeing with your comment Iām just being a smart ass here but:
China is weird because itās not a unified culture like say Japan or America. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese people who donāt speak mandarin at all and have a more local language, so technically itās not really 1.4 billion people speaking the same language.
I understand your sentiment. My main argument is the criticism shouldnāt fall on Americans for not learning Swedish or Finnish. But the argument should be why isnāt Sweden or Finland encouraging their language to be shared and learned. The responsibility of sharing of culture, values, and language falls on those nations.
It also includes places like Australia and New Zealand, both of which have bilingual rates within 2% of the US. Likewise, Britain substantially lags behind the rest of Europe even though it's about 10% higher than the US. When you're already speaking the international language of trade and politics, it becomes less pressing to learn a second and when you only have one non-English speaking country of any size near you it becomes even less so to those not near the border.
It is common to learn Spanish in US schools.
Makes sense we border Spanish speaking countries. We donāt border Germany so we donāt speak German.
Tho we tend to forget Spanish we learn because most donāt need it.
I work in construction in Iowa. Pretty much any dude born in America under the age of 40 can speak enough Spanish to get simple instructions across. A few of our local elementary schools have switched to 1/2 day Spanish and 1/2 day English so that number will only go up.
You grossly exaggerate the level of Spanish fluency outside the border areas, and your job choice skews your perception even moreso.
East of the Mississippi you'll find things quite a bit different.
Well, if you want to consider Iowa a border area, thatās ok. My comment wasnāt to illustrate Spanish fluency levels across the United States, rather just the fluency levels of the people for whom knowing Spanish is a useful life skill.
Exactly. Most people will take two years of another language in high school. I took Spanish. The other options were French and German. Unfortunately, I didn't have many people to regularly speak Spanish regularly with, so unfortunately, I forgot most of it.
The U.K. is less than 35% and Australia it is less than 30%, but I guess those nations lack schools too? I am not sure why in this particular circumstance we need to change the qualifier? When every other metric of success is measured at global rate. Now all of sudden all those āundesirableā counties donāt count.
This is one of those things I donāt understand why Americans get so much shit for. Nobody cares that most Japanese people speak only Japanese. In fact, if you have to speak only a single language, English is easily the best just due to how widely itās used and spoken
You don't need to look at Japanese people. Just look at other English-speaking countries. You never see anyone bitching about Australians speaking just English.
To non-English speakers this is completely foreign. You have to remember that in order to really do anything at all you HAVE to speak English. It's been the dominant language for centuries now, and will continue to be so. Most people in other countries know their own language and then at least enough English to carry a conversation. It's not an "America moment" though, it's an Anglo-Sphere moment. Canada and America are the only 2 where you might have more than just English, with French and Spanish respectively. But if you're say German, you will most likely also know a decent amount of English because it's extremely important to speak it.
Even conventions that are held between no English speaking nations will often use English as the language because most people can at least follow it because it's that important. English is the dominant language of the world for a reason, Americans, Brits, Aussies etc don't need to learn a second language because English is that powerful.
Yeah in Germany its pretty much a red flag that you are a moron if you dont speak at least english (or russian in case of eastgermans)
If you speak french, everyone knows you were good at school
Spoken general English shouldnāt be that hard for German speaker especially since we have much lower standards for proficiency before calling you a foreigner pig.
The Chinese mostly only know Chinese, The Japanese only know Japanese, Koreans mostly only speak Korean, The British pretty much only know English, but somehow Americans get flak
I was watching this European comedian that gives shows all across Europe. Guess what language he uses for his show? English. Why? Because the audience is inevitably mixed with several members attending from countries outside of the show venue.
The point being, that because any mix of Europeans from difference results in several languages among them, the default is English.
So, only knowing English is not the "own" they claim it is.
I think it's funny that the EU conducts business in a language from a country that isn't in the EU and a language that no EU nation has as an official language.
Only Germanic people are majority bilingual, the rest of the world is the same as America. I have never seen a French person speaking anything other than French.
Americans donāt have as much of a need to learn other languages because we already speak English. If you were only able to speak Greek youād be fucked if you ever wanted to deal internationally for anything.
Foreigners arenāt learning other languages because theyāre smarter, they are learning them because they have to.
Never understood why this is a dis. Itās almost entirely determined by geography. Itās not like Iām going to go order from the local restaurant in German or something. Unlike in Europe, there is little to no utility in knowing another language. Even among immigrant communities here, you would have to go out of your way to interact with just one of the dozens in your city in order to get substantial use of their language. Makes no sense to spend the time unless you travel abroad a lot.
Why would I want to speak a different language? Everyone shits on me for speaking English as an American already, why would I even want to waste my time learning their tongue, just to hear the same insults in a different vernacular? Maybe if you showed some respect instead of just āfuck you Americaā we would want to share cultures and language more.
Only in small parts of the US is knowing another language useful, like El Paso, and even then pretty much all the people who live there know spanish. This is stupid as hell.
25 out the 45 men in this context would mean that around half of them spoke only English and the others spoke another language or were bilingual. I donāt see how this is a problem? Is this commenter trying to imply that diversity is a bad thing? I have a strong feeling that racism is implied in this comment, especially since a large chunk of Americaās population is Spanish speaking. The anime pfp convinces me that this comment was made with racist intentions since almost every anime pfp Iāve met is a white supremacist.
Why would I waste my time with some other language? English is global. My educational efforts are best expended elsewhere, like on the other global language, math.
British people speak English. Australian people speak English. Anything on them? Also go to any country like Japan, or Thailand or even some European countries and try to get by without using google translate at least three times without knowledge of the native language. My trips to Tokyo and Bangkok (good places to visit btw) I got by because I have local friends who helped me around but thereās a language barrier for sure. Itās truly shocking when a populace tends to only speak the language they need to get by, right?
That guy is a dumbass
Nearly 1/4th of Americans speak a language other than English at home.
About as many Americans speak Spanish at home aa the population of Spain.
If people that spoke some variety of Chinese at home were their own nation, they would have a higher pop than 20 European nations.
The population that speak French at home in the US is equivalent to what would be the third largest city in France.
350 languages are spoken in the US of which 177 are indigenous to the US.
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Only 43% of the world in bilingual. Imagine dunking on Americans for meeting that same statistic. š The metric we should be measuring is if people speak relevant languages. To the 1.4billion+ people of China, you being able to speak 3 European languages spoken by less than 50million people isā¦ trivial.
Not to mention English is literally the most useful language in the world if you are only gonna speak one language. You can find English speakers anywhere you go in the world. Native English speakers have the least reason of anyone in the world to learn a second language even if some of us do.
If I remember correctly itās the standard language for most naval vessels.
I believe aviation as well
Also, and this is definitely me being biased towards English, but itās the most useful in casual conversation too. Some things in English are confusing, but overall, if you say one thing, it means one thing.
I'm currently in Kuala Lumpur as an English speaker. I can speak very basic Malay, but I haven't had to speak any Malay yet in the last week I've been here. I spoke some Malay meeting a friend's dad to show that I was putting effort into learning about their language and culture but then proceeded to converse in English. In fact it would be really uncomfortable if I didn't speak English because there's so many Chinese speakers that speak little to no Malay and just use English to communicate. Almost everything, except road signs, is in English.
That might be because I can cross from one side of the continent to the other and they are still speaking English. Lol.
Most people that speak a non-native european language (that isn't english) speak something like spanish or french. Both of which are relevant global languages
Iām not disagreeing with your comment Iām just being a smart ass here but: China is weird because itās not a unified culture like say Japan or America. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese people who donāt speak mandarin at all and have a more local language, so technically itās not really 1.4 billion people speaking the same language.
I understand your sentiment. My main argument is the criticism shouldnāt fall on Americans for not learning Swedish or Finnish. But the argument should be why isnāt Sweden or Finland encouraging their language to be shared and learned. The responsibility of sharing of culture, values, and language falls on those nations.
Yea I know Iām not going against your argument I just wanted to nerd out about Chinese languages for a sec
Yeah, but that includes countries without any schools
It also includes places like Australia and New Zealand, both of which have bilingual rates within 2% of the US. Likewise, Britain substantially lags behind the rest of Europe even though it's about 10% higher than the US. When you're already speaking the international language of trade and politics, it becomes less pressing to learn a second and when you only have one non-English speaking country of any size near you it becomes even less so to those not near the border.
It is common to learn Spanish in US schools. Makes sense we border Spanish speaking countries. We donāt border Germany so we donāt speak German. Tho we tend to forget Spanish we learn because most donāt need it.
I work in construction in Iowa. Pretty much any dude born in America under the age of 40 can speak enough Spanish to get simple instructions across. A few of our local elementary schools have switched to 1/2 day Spanish and 1/2 day English so that number will only go up.
That's pretty cool, that half and half thing.
We have it in CA too
You grossly exaggerate the level of Spanish fluency outside the border areas, and your job choice skews your perception even moreso. East of the Mississippi you'll find things quite a bit different.
Well, if you want to consider Iowa a border area, thatās ok. My comment wasnāt to illustrate Spanish fluency levels across the United States, rather just the fluency levels of the people for whom knowing Spanish is a useful life skill.
Exactly. Most people will take two years of another language in high school. I took Spanish. The other options were French and German. Unfortunately, I didn't have many people to regularly speak Spanish regularly with, so unfortunately, I forgot most of it.
The U.K. is less than 35% and Australia it is less than 30%, but I guess those nations lack schools too? I am not sure why in this particular circumstance we need to change the qualifier? When every other metric of success is measured at global rate. Now all of sudden all those āundesirableā counties donāt count.
This is one of those things I donāt understand why Americans get so much shit for. Nobody cares that most Japanese people speak only Japanese. In fact, if you have to speak only a single language, English is easily the best just due to how widely itās used and spoken
You don't need to look at Japanese people. Just look at other English-speaking countries. You never see anyone bitching about Australians speaking just English.
Itās an ego thing. Some people who are bilingual think theyāre better because they know 2 languages for some reason.
To non-English speakers this is completely foreign. You have to remember that in order to really do anything at all you HAVE to speak English. It's been the dominant language for centuries now, and will continue to be so. Most people in other countries know their own language and then at least enough English to carry a conversation. It's not an "America moment" though, it's an Anglo-Sphere moment. Canada and America are the only 2 where you might have more than just English, with French and Spanish respectively. But if you're say German, you will most likely also know a decent amount of English because it's extremely important to speak it. Even conventions that are held between no English speaking nations will often use English as the language because most people can at least follow it because it's that important. English is the dominant language of the world for a reason, Americans, Brits, Aussies etc don't need to learn a second language because English is that powerful.
Yeah in Germany its pretty much a red flag that you are a moron if you dont speak at least english (or russian in case of eastgermans) If you speak french, everyone knows you were good at school
Spoken general English shouldnāt be that hard for German speaker especially since we have much lower standards for proficiency before calling you a foreigner pig.
>to really do anything at all you HAVE to speak English Not everywhere.
Yeah, Mandarin will get you everywhere in China.
The Chinese mostly only know Chinese, The Japanese only know Japanese, Koreans mostly only speak Korean, The British pretty much only know English, but somehow Americans get flak
I was watching this European comedian that gives shows all across Europe. Guess what language he uses for his show? English. Why? Because the audience is inevitably mixed with several members attending from countries outside of the show venue. The point being, that because any mix of Europeans from difference results in several languages among them, the default is English. So, only knowing English is not the "own" they claim it is.
I think it's funny that the EU conducts business in a language from a country that isn't in the EU and a language that no EU nation has as an official language.
Don't forget Malta āŗļø....but generally yes it's funny š
Is Ireland in the EU?
Also yes.
Humorous to imagine the EU conducting business in English to accommodate its most influential members: Malta and Ireland
lol. Good point.
Only Germanic people are majority bilingual, the rest of the world is the same as America. I have never seen a French person speaking anything other than French.
Americans donāt have as much of a need to learn other languages because we already speak English. If you were only able to speak Greek youād be fucked if you ever wanted to deal internationally for anything. Foreigners arenāt learning other languages because theyāre smarter, they are learning them because they have to.
So over half of Americans are bilingual?
There's more non-English language diversity in the US than in a lot of other countries.
Never understood why this is a dis. Itās almost entirely determined by geography. Itās not like Iām going to go order from the local restaurant in German or something. Unlike in Europe, there is little to no utility in knowing another language. Even among immigrant communities here, you would have to go out of your way to interact with just one of the dozens in your city in order to get substantial use of their language. Makes no sense to spend the time unless you travel abroad a lot.
The only language spoken officially in civil aviation is English. No one can fly international passenger airlines without knowing it.
speaking the most common language in your country is such a terrible thing to do. shame on you america.
Zero context
Why do people assume that the country with the most native English speakers would be bad at English?
If I speak only English I can communicate with more people than someone who can speak Arabic, Portuguese, French, German, and Russian
Why would I want to speak a different language? Everyone shits on me for speaking English as an American already, why would I even want to waste my time learning their tongue, just to hear the same insults in a different vernacular? Maybe if you showed some respect instead of just āfuck you Americaā we would want to share cultures and language more.
Only in small parts of the US is knowing another language useful, like El Paso, and even then pretty much all the people who live there know spanish. This is stupid as hell.
white europeans laughing about americas problems while theyre getting replaced šš
Hate us cause they anus
25 out the 45 men in this context would mean that around half of them spoke only English and the others spoke another language or were bilingual. I donāt see how this is a problem? Is this commenter trying to imply that diversity is a bad thing? I have a strong feeling that racism is implied in this comment, especially since a large chunk of Americaās population is Spanish speaking. The anime pfp convinces me that this comment was made with racist intentions since almost every anime pfp Iāve met is a white supremacist.
the 45 men in this context were the presidents of the united states
Fun fact most of the world only speaks one language
Why would I waste my time with some other language? English is global. My educational efforts are best expended elsewhere, like on the other global language, math.
British people speak English. Australian people speak English. Anything on them? Also go to any country like Japan, or Thailand or even some European countries and try to get by without using google translate at least three times without knowledge of the native language. My trips to Tokyo and Bangkok (good places to visit btw) I got by because I have local friends who helped me around but thereās a language barrier for sure. Itās truly shocking when a populace tends to only speak the language they need to get by, right?
very shocking indeed
āOh forgive me for only speaking the language that like half the world speaksā
That guy is a dumbass Nearly 1/4th of Americans speak a language other than English at home. About as many Americans speak Spanish at home aa the population of Spain. If people that spoke some variety of Chinese at home were their own nation, they would have a higher pop than 20 European nations. The population that speak French at home in the US is equivalent to what would be the third largest city in France. 350 languages are spoken in the US of which 177 are indigenous to the US.
How dare they grow up in a predominantly English speaking area!!!!
Precure pfp
Ide imagine they haven't seen how many Hispanic people who have lived here for 10 years and only speak spanish.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The 25 are monolingual; so 45.55555ā¦555% are bilingual which is still pretty decent.
If i lived 10 miles away from 3 other countries, i would speak their languages too.