Many Americans actually are bilingual or are studying another language to become bilingual.
But Americans be like duhhhhh hahaha stereotypes
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Some perspective is worthwhile here. It’s 21% of americans vs 65% of Europeans.
True, but, for most Americans, the “need” to become bilingual simply wasn’t a thing until recently. (It became a thing mainly because US Spanish-speaking communities are slowly moving northward from where they began in the southernmost states.)
In Europe, it’s much easier to run into someone who speaks a different language than you simply by driving to another town.
For the most part, the only two languages Americans have to worry about learning if they want to communicate with neighboring countries is French (because of Canada, although they also speak English) and Spanish (because of the countries to the US’s south, including Mexico and others).
Bingo. This is exactly it.
Americans almost never even hear other languages, let alone need to understand them. There’s has been a culture here for over a century for immigrants to integrate and learn the language and culture of America as a replacement for their own. Three generations ago my relatives did this - they literally abandoned their last name in the process.
the only two languages Americans have to worry about learning if they want to communicate with neighboring countries is French
Why would anyone want to communicate with the Quebecois?
/c/badlinguistics
Wut
Many indians speak 4+ languages easily , and we dont even notice that 😅
Isn’t India in Asia
Clearly, this dude voted to become mr. worldwide
Geographically it is a subcontinent that slammed into Asia to form the Himalayas, so you could make the argument it is its own thing.
That’s like arguing nothing is its own thing cause they used to be one continent.
its not about continent its about himalayas that saparated india and china .
SEA PROBABLY , however India , pakistan , sri lanka and bangladesh are considered a subcontinent coz similar cultures , and are different from rest of asia !
Last I checked.
Fun fact: when you say “Asian” to an American, their first thought is East or Southeast Asia, but a British person’s primary association with “Asianness”, for lack of a better term, is India and Pakistan.
I did not know that, interesting.
Do they refer to East Asians as “oriental” then?
My mom complained that the ramen she likes isn’t called Oriental anymore.
SIGH
Only the very old and/or racist ones do afaik
Wait why? They’re literally in the Orient
We don’t call it that anymore. Haven’t for decades.
As for the why, the time when that term was in regular use was a time with a lot of anti-asian bigotry and most of the people who refuse to stop using it are the same ones who use other outdated terms/slurs for non-white and non-western people, so it has tons of negative connotations…
India and Pakistan are considered to be in Asia but more accurately they are considered to be in the Indian Subcontinent. The same way Iran, Saudi Arabia and the rest are also considered to be in Asia but they are more accurately considered to be on the Middle East.
How well do you speak those languages? For example, can you order pizza with pineapple and olives in any of those languages? What if the pizza you get is cold, there’s only one olive on it and the crust is soggy, could you get your complaints through in any language?
Or perhaps will the explanation be more like: “Pizza bad, no good. Want money back.”
I’m not from India but as another Asian, yes, we can have fluent conversations in several languages. (I grew up speaking English, Mandarin, Malay, Cantonese and a bit of Hakka)
Found the Malaysian
That’s pretty cool. Took a quick look at the relationships those languages have, and it seems that Malay is the odd one out, all the others are in the sinitic family. I would expect that if you learn one, your mind isn’t going to explode if you try to learn the other two. However, Malay is completely different, so jumping into that world may require some extra effort.
To give a European example, if you already know Norwegian, learning Swedish it’s only one step away. Jumping into Danish or German at that point can be done, but it will require some extra effort. A similar situation exists between Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
It’s more to do with my multicultural upbringing - Malay is the national language here in Malaysia, so it’s pretty much compulsory to learn & speak. My parents are Cantonese & Hakka Chinese, I learnt to speak Malay & Mandarin in school (where ethnic Chinese kids from different dialect groups as well as ppl from other ethnicities mingle), and spoke mostly English in college & work. We also have Indians and other minorities who speak even more dialects/languages than I do.
Well most of us speak a mother tongue , and english ( since ex britt colony ) very fluently , but there are times when both parents speak a different language and the city /state you live in has a different language and hence they speak it very close to native fluency !
My bf and his family for instance speaks 6 languages for the reasons listed above !
Not to take away from this but often these 4 are very similar languages that could be easily interpreted as dialects if not the identity politics.
It is complicated. India has at least four language families - Indo-European, Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan. So Hindi (I-E) is closer related to English or Greek than to Tamil (Dra), Santali (AA) or Zeme (S-T). While it is rare for people to speak languages belonging to all four families, I know at least three people who can passably speak six languages from two or three families.
you could say the same about italian-spanish-french-romanian they still counts as separate languages
Well most indian languages are not even mutually intelligible so idk if its about identity politics or what not !
面白いね。メキシコがアメリカの近くにあるのに、アメリカの大分がスペイン語を全然はなせないねｗ！私もスペイン語が習いたいけど、日本語もうＰａｉｎｉｎｔｈｅａｓｓだよ！
There are few reasons to visit Mexico for most Americans, even those on the border. If you don’t understand that, then you’re ignorant of how things typically work here. I live there (in a border city), feel free to ask me questions.
This said, I agree that japanese is a pain in the ass to learn. Still, I’m really enjoying the process of it. I’m done with Hiragana, and I’m learning Katakana now. So, I’m a the level of a child, basically… But that’s okay. We all have to start somewhere, and judging strangers is kind of considered an asshole move here in America.
Good luck with your learnings.
I assume in terms of incentive, there are more reason for Spanish speakers to learn English than English speakers to learn Spanish. Likewise most Spanish speakers within the US tend to keep to their own communities, and you’re unlikely to directly interact with them unless you are friends with people in the group, or frequently do business with people who speak Spanish.
It’s kinda like Russian and its bordering Countries. Many people in Kazakhstan can speak Russian, but not many Russians can speak Kazakh.
And good luck with your language endeavors as well. Japanese does get easier the more you interact with it. I am at the top of my game when I’m watching and reading media constantly.
That’s exactly correct. I can be in Mexico in a half an hour or less if I hopped in my car right now. Despite this, I haven’t heard anyone speak Spanish in literally years. There’s some communities here that will denegrate folks for not speaking English, although that’s thankfully not very common in my city.
Still, despite my cities approval and acceptance of immigrants, there’s been a cultural expectation for over a century for immigrants to assimilate here, rather than mix. This leads to English, the most convenient language for us to learn, often being the only one we learn. It also means bilingual immigrants are often pushed to abandon further study in their original language in order to fully embrace and improve their English.
The fact English is the most popular language on the planet, and the one used most often in international business, gives further incentive to master it over starting or continuing a different language. As the poorly constructed meme above sloppily showcases, most people (forget only targeting Americans) don’t master this language. I can only imagine it’s not the easiest one out there to learn.
Japanese is a lot of fun so far! I love anime, and I look forward to someday watching without subs or dubs. It only took a few weeks to learn the Hiragana, but the Kanji are likely to humble me greatly.
I recommend the pokemon anime, especially if you grew up with the English dub. It’s a kid’s anime, so the difficulty level isn’t very high, and if you are familiar with the episodes, it can help you fill in the gaps to where your comprehension ends. Plus its really interesting seeing the subtle differences in the music, edited scenes restored, and even getting to see outright banned episodes.
I understood “pain in the ass”, did I pass the test?
I actually didn’t understand that part lol… Took me two times to get it
日本語難しいね。。。
Americans have trouble with any accent that isn’t the blandest, nails on chalkboard accent.
Once had one ask me if I was speaking English when I spoke to him (for context I am Irish, the north bit)
You’ll probably hear more and more varied accents in an average US city than in all of Ireland.
Lol yeah, it’s just the Americans that don’t understand you. Sure…
I mean if you never leave the US (easy to do, it’s gigantic and travel is expensive), it’s kinda understandable that you’d struggle with accents because you rarely hear any, let alone other languages. I know americans that have trouble with english accents lmao
I am dating a man from England and it’s amazing how many people don’t understand his accent. It might just be me getting to know him, but I don’t find his accent (or even tough accents like Irish or Scottish) hard to understand anymore.
Bland and nails on chalkboard? That’s like the opposite of bland. Not great, but definitely not bland. Bland is blunt and flat. Nails on chalkboard is shrill, sharp, and grating. I just don’t understand how you can believe both at the same time.
Here, I mean more the reaction to it, I sometimes cringe at the pronunciation or intonation in the way one would to nails on a chalkboard (the idiom can have more than one meaning or reaction attached to it)
That doesn’t change the argument. Bland and cringe are also not like each other. I’m all for you criticizing something because it’s different than you, but at least use your language consistently and properly. How would anyone interpret a secondary analogy without knowing how you personally react? It already has a clear meaning on its surface. Occam’s razor would indicate that’s enough. Why would anyone invent a second possible scenario that’s only knowable if you have access to information that isn’t well known, and in this case, near certainty of being unknown? Just say hearing the accent from some other country makes you cringe. Communication doesn’t have to be difficult unless you make it so.
Well fucksake mate, when someone asks yous where you’re from, yous go “NornIrn”
Naecunt can unnerstaund thon
Right so don’t really know if this is bait… but that’s one kind of accent (and the tickest pronunciation at that) in ulster, specifically greater Belfast/co. Antrim and very few people speak that thick. For the most part they should be quite understandable from the perspective of anyone who consumes any English language media outside of only American or only London (RP) English. The number of times I have had people have trouble with my accent in Europe and then I ask them what they watched when learning English and the answer is American TV is astounding.
This is me getting on my wee podium now but I have a huge problem with the Americans and Brits for this, they marginalise the fuck out if our dialect, make fun of it for being unitelligible (after making no effort to understand it), and often deny it any legitimacy.
In reality Irish English is spoken by 5-7million people, as large as some dialects of European languages (eg. Austrian/swiss German, Belgian/Swiss French, etc) and if you learn French or German you still get some exposure to those dialects and if you out your mind to it understand it.
I have a huge problem with the Americans and Brits for this, they marginalise the fuck out if our dialect, make fun of it for being unitelligible
I mean I know you’re talking about the wider world and not just this thread, but you started the conversation by being disingenuous about Americans and their dialects. It’s kind of hard for people to take “I have a legitimate dialect” seriously when you just got done trashing half a continent’s worth of dialects
Maybe if we all broach the topic with a little more understanding, you and everyone will feel better about it. For example Appalachian English and Northern Ireland English are both dialects with their own rules of pronunciation and grammar. They’re both legitimate. But it’s not surprising they’d have trouble understanding each other because they have so little interaction. But with patience and mutual respect it can happen
As a native german speaker I have to say swiss german is unintelligible gibberish.
Most German speakers make fun of how unintelligible the Austrian German dialect is. It’s so bad sometimes that translators are required.
You just also seem to have a problem of marginalizing US English and UK English. They vary drastically. Just like how you just stated accents in your own country can vary.
asks yous
Before I read the rest of your comment, I thought you were going for a New York accent.
My god son, just how many marbles were you trying to eat while talking to those nice Americans? You do know that the untied states has around 30 dialects, and every accent from around the world, right? I’m sure you knew better than that when you generalized 300 million people into one anecdote.
German here, speaking english fluently, enough french to get everything done while on vacation in France or Wallony and learning Japanese atm.
I’m also learning Japanese! How do you feel about it so far?
I’m enjoying it, but the sheer number of Kanji are quite intimidating to think about…
I’m using duolingo and am almost done with the first big section. It is so different compared to germanic and latin languages! But that was one of the reasons to learn it, so kinda expected. I’m also enjoying it, I don’t worry so much about reading and writing and focus on speaking and understanding, like a child would do. Reading and writing is the next step and I hope that it comes somewhat naturally this way.
I’m also using that platform, and I’m learning the written languages along the way as they prompt them. I assumed it was helping me learn, but I have no idea haha. The Hiragana and Katakana are neat compared to English letters!
Is it a lot harder to learn compared to the others you know? Other than ASL, this is my first genuine attempt after flunking Italian many, many years ago in school. I assumed I’d never tackle another language ever again, but I’m loving this so far. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that the gamification aspect is motivating me.
Wait till you discover the wonderful world of the pitch accent!
My 3 favorite experiences with language as an American:
(1) My Jamaican coworker who I couldn’t understand for the life of me and my Ukrainian coworker who my Jamaican couldn’t understand at all, the Ukrainian coworker understood the Jamaican coworker just fine though and I understood my Ukrainian coworker just fine. Basically it turns into a fun game of telephone whenever we need to talk.
(2) My former coworker from Haiti who no one but the hiring manager and I could understand, the best part about this is that I didn’t know he had an accent. I just didn’t hear it somehow. He was a great guy, he went back home a few years ago when his mother passed. Got stuck due to the pandemic and never came back to the company. I hope he’s doing well.
(3) My former coworker from Guatemala insisting English wasn’t my first language as to him it sounded like English was my second language at best. I’ve been working on it since then. I still suck at it.
Include anglo Canadians in there too!
Complaining about bilingual (english + french) positions in the public service is a favorite hobby of anglo public servants, as if the french ones didn’t need to learn a second language to get the job… Heck, it’s not rare to see/hear one argue that french Canadians should just start speaking english and stop bothering them about their “unique culture”…
But hey, it’s not racism… Or so they say 🤷
I can confirm this, in high school (Québec) no one really gives a f**k about learning English as they don’t need it if they stay in Québec and don’t understand that knowing English is a valuable asset.
Speaking French isn’t a race.
Racism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.
Ethnicity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicity
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area
Guess that answers the question, you’re wrong :)
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You are
Your
🤣
You mean y’all. Don’t embarrass us.
y’all’d’nt’ve’d’d’i’d’nt’ve’d’y’all’t’ve’d
There, their, they’re.
American here, I’m going to challenge myself to remember as many as I can.
Set: A group of things that go together.
Set: Letting a dessert cool in the fridge
Set: A stage for a play or film
Set: A command to put something somewhere
Set: A part of Tennis
…
5/704 isn’t so bad, right?
Edit: looking up the definitions shows a lot of sub-definitions that essentially have the same meaning. I don’t think it’s appropriate to say that the word has 435 meanings when “set a course” and “set a fire” are basically “start a thing,” yet they’re listed as different definitions. The are many many of these cases even just on Google’s definition blurb.
But I’m no dictionary expert so…
Yeah some do seem the same, but thats possilbe also a bias from knowning the language.
Though through thought
have/of
of/off
to/too
ad/add
I today saw someone use “theirs” in place of “there is”, and I hope that they are a non-native speaker.
Here’s one: it’s/its
Now tell me which is possessive.
I know romanian, moldovan, british english and american english
I reckon you’d be half decent at Scots too.
Ahh yes the blanket shit on Americans post.
Not sure why their are doing it, could of made fun of anyone.
*they’re
*could have
That was the joke.
indeed, I guess I should have added /s or some pointers like >>> here is the joke <<<
the original joke being that it’s seemingly always the Americans that are making the would of/should of/could of mistake
Make a joke about the British, they’re like “Yeah we do drink a lot of tea did a lot of imperialism, and our food sucks”
Make a joke about the French, and they’re like “ho ho, we are rude and love wine non?”
Make a joke about the Italians, and they’re like “Ay, we do love a pizza, and can’t fight a war!”
Make a joke about Americans, and there’s always the “WHY DO YOU GUYS MAKE FUN OF US! NO FAIR! WHY DO PEOPLE THINK ITS FUNNY TO HATE US?!?”
I’ve experienced only the opposite. Americans love self deprecating humor but Yuros will literally cry about you “abusing my country” if you say one negative thing.
Its infuriating…its like people arent a hive mind, init?
Yuros?
Make a joke about Americans being fucking idiots and don’t expect Americans to laugh along. I mean what do you expect? Yeah we drink a lot of coffee and did slavery and use little creamer cups and eat lots of fried food and spend too much on our military. Americans, right? This? No thanks.
What you drink isn’t coffee.
Only one of these four groups have been dunked on incessantly for years upon years with the same three jokes.
You mean the French with the white flag and baguette jokes? Spaniards with the lazy/siesta jokes? Italians with the pasta and pizza jokes? South europeans with the poor/debt jokes? Irish with the alcoholism jokes? British with their shitty food cuisine jokes? Swedish and their immigrant policy jokes?
Americans are not special. Each country has their joke topic, yours in a nutshell are about yall being very self centered, and it shows tbh.
Yer, I love how that comment completely ignores the same tired shit that each nationality hears over and over
- An upside-down person who lost a war to birds.
At least they were big birds, not like the war another nation lost
Yeah…it’s the French and capitulating to the Nazis, and they still take it better than Americans and any criticism
jokes are funnier when they’ve got a nugget of truth i think. if the joke was about americans being fat and putting cheese on everything, or about how we’re the richest country in the world but people die all the time because they can’t afford basic medicine, i doubt there’d by any complaints. but saying that we can’t speak any language feels less like poking fun at regional differences, and more like just, idk, lying for the sake of being cruel?
nailed it
its also as if you’re being disingenuous, because try to say that shit to some hardcore right wing patriots of any country and see how fast you get your faced caved in.
It’s timeless
A classic
Blanket 🤔
I would of knew itd turn out this way
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 20 percent of Americans can converse in two or more languages, compared with 56 percent of Europeans.
I think you’ll find Bavarians are very much a unilingual people
And the French.
Don’t forget the Spanish. And the Latin Americans as well (including Brazil which doesn’t speak Spanish but Portuguese).
Go easy on us, our 1% needs to keep us stupid for myriad reasons, mostly to stay in power. Don’t worry though, they’ll come for you next, wherever you are. Likely selling you on some other enemy or distraction.
The only good thing that the Americanization brought is, that, except the French, the world can communicate with each other in English.
I know you are joking but based on my purely anecdotal personal experience, the French (at least in Paris) can now speak and are willing to speak in English much more than a few decades back.
The first time I went to France, almost 25 years back, I had a rough time communicating at restaurants or even buying tickets at the Paris metro stations. Not sure if the latter was an ability or willingness issue because even holding up two fingers and saying “two tickets” was apparently indecipherable. Had to muster my school days French and say “deux billets” to produce instant results.
Edit: And no, the two fingers I was holding up were not the middle finger of each hand :P
it’s like the one upside(ish) of capitalism they had to start communicating in English, because tourism.
That is the one upside to capitalism and you don’t even consider it a full upside?
well because it’s kind of a forced adoption in an ideal world we would have developed a common tongue by slowly merging the languages, or at least would have taken one that’s pretty good and then improve on it. For example Hungarian is much better in the sense that what you write is what you pronounce, not the mess that is English, so in an ideal common tongue I feel like that aspect would be adopted.
Of course Hungarian also has stupid parts, ly (<- that’s supposed to be indeed one letter) and j is the same thing. x is just ks, y is pronounced the same as i and w is just v so there is some extra fat on it, but other than that the 44 letters cover all the sounds you make while pronouncing words.
Hungarian is like Chinese to most romanic / germanic languages.
While being excellent in describing every little thing pretty efficiently and short, the problem I see with highly advanced languages is imho that they are pretty complicated to learn.
We also normalized porn
You’re welcome, degens.
Porn was legalized for the first time in Denmark 1967, so not really.
Good thing that’s a different word then
Legalisation and normalisation go hand in hand
It’s legal to lick all the doorknobs you want, but something tells me you’re already on that ball.
Even if the French could communicate in English, would anyone want to have a conversation with a Frenchman?
Non
As an island monkey, I’m hurt by this comment. Y U no love UK?
Oh I love the UK! I just hate the Trump-impression the people who’re too old that they should be allowed to vote have given power.
