Many Americans actually are bilingual or are studying another language to become bilingual.
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?
But Americans be like duhhhhh hahaha stereotypes
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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…
Wait till you discover the wonderful world of the pitch accent!
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.
Oh look, it’s the same old reposted garbage meme that I have seen on Reddit hundreds of times.
Oh look, it’s the same old reposted garbage comment that I have seen on Reddit hundreds of times.
Oh look, it’s the same old comment complaining about another comment that I have seen on Reddit hundreds of times.
Oh look, it’s the same old reposted comment chain that I have seen on Reddit hundreds of times.
Something something pls give upvotes
I would never upvote chain-comments, they are so cringe after the first two
Came here to say this!
this
That’s how you can tell Lemmy is growing.
idk I’ve seen this first time, and its hilarious, though agreed I never used Reddit that much
This has been reposted on the dankmemes subreddit a countless amount of times.
I’m sure it has, but not everyone lives (lived?) in Reddit like you.
Oh man, I’m so glad that hasn’t popped up here. That sub was hot garbage. I blocked it years ago, and forgot about it until now haha.
So thats what non-Americans do with their free time. We Americans spend it driving sports cars and extracting wealth from other countries.
no you dont XD your government does while you cry
That’s why we pay taxes bro. I don’t exploit with my own hands so I can enjoy luxury guilt-free.
luxuries like not having free health insurance? XD stay in your lane pal
I think it’s pretty obvious I was being facetious lol.
My favorite description of the US
It’s not a country, it’s a corporation with an army
Fuckin gotem
Europeos, cuando llegan a México y no pueden hablar Espanol:
“Voy a coger el autobús”
@Lowered_lifted @LambLeeg, también causaría las mismas curiosas miradas y preguntas en Argentina 😂
¿Neta? No soy metiche pero, ¿como? 😄
Meanwhile, many africans speak 2 languages in their family, a third one for people that don’t speak one of theses two and have studied french and english.
So, exactly how it works in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesian.
They speak native local language from their city, other two from other islands, English for international language, sometimes Chinese, Malay, Arabic, Korean, or Japanese. Not to forget the national language, Indonesian.
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They don’t think it’s normal, it’s all that’s necessary. English is the lingua franca
The incentive to learn a language is in software, not human.
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Learning 3+ languages sounds like a lot of work. Colonizing the entire world so that you never have to learn a second language seems like the smarter move if you ask me 🧐
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.
Speak for yourselves. As a Latino born from Mexican immigrants, I speak English and Spanish poorly 😢
Lo siento amigo (o bróder )
21% illiteracy is shockingly bad tbh.
Where’d you get that figure? World Population Reveiw puts it at 99%. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/literacy-rate-by-country
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills
https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf
The chart on page 4 seems to put the US literacy rate at about the same as Germany and the UK.
If you didn’t look at this list and ask “Why did they pick these countries and leave out others?” you’re not doing critical thinking. The countries with the highest literacy in the world are almost all either socialist or formerly socialist countries.
Not sure what that has to do with the American literacy rate? Also the reason those countries are on the list is because it only uses oecd member countries (the dark blue ones).
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/406e3430-fc99-408a-8bc8-59297c1525fa.webp
Hexbear blocks externally hosted images so I can’t see that. Can you edit it and put it in the instance properly with copy paste?
because it only uses oecd member countries
Ahh yes, the “international community”.
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It’s an OECD report. They’re comparing to OECD countries and I’d take the Polish numbers with a grain of salt as they have quite a couple fewer refugees, modulo Ukrainians (Ukraine has an education system ballpark Greece or Italy).
Public school and universal literacy was literally invented in Germany (Luther was lobbying princes for it so people could read the bible).
This can’t be true… 21% of Americans can’t read?
Gives some perspective on american culture and problems compared to the rest of the world doesn’t it?
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills
I’ve heard nothing but bad things about American schools and they’re said to revoltingly underfunded especially in poor and non-white communities. Seen from an outside perspective it seems like all American schools do is multiple choice tests, bullying, pledge of allegiance, school shootings, eat hot chip and lie.
Austerity and culture war has consequences, one of them is that students are not given then education they need.
The school shootings are statistically insignificant but magnified to enormous size by the media, but other than that yes.
Hey!! That’s just NOT TRUE!!
…we call them french fries
I’m all for american self-depreciation but:
“34% of adults who lack proficiency in literacy were born outside the US.”
https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/
I hate to extrapolate data as an idiotic internetter but being born in the US and being illiterate could also be because we have so many immigrants that aren’t set up for success right away and aren’t as concerned with education as they are with meeting their most basic needs.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigration-by-country
Even if you excluded them (which seems like a very
approach) these people are only illiterate because they’re from brown countries", you still have an education system where 13.9% of people are coming out illiterate.I’m all for american self-depreciation
I am not american
because we have so many immigrants
Nice of you to edit in the part that confirms you’re not just a nationalist, but a racist too.
Lol damn you don’t have to call me racist. I’m not, and just saw someone using a pretty general statistic to imply American education is terrible or something. I’m just someone who sees appropriation of incomplete information to create a half baked idea that makes people feel like they understand something complex when in reality we are all probably wrong in this thread. Such is the internet though.
And I was talking about my own opportunity to self depreciate, and wasn’t assuming anyone elses nationality.
Yes I did edit my comment lol. We do have a lot of immigrants that may come from poorer countries in search of a better life. Whats wrong with that? How do you know I’m not specifically proud of that for my country? You are the one implying Americans are less-than because of some statistic.
When you are so militant with discussions, how will you ever come to an understanding? Why be so mean?
So? Takes like six months to teach an adult to read, that’s not an excuse.
U aint tellin me nutin!
Hey we speak two languages…English and Bad english…
Corporate and Common
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).
You are
Your
🤣
Here’s one: it’s/its
Now tell me which is possessive.
There, their, they’re.
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.
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.
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
To be fair, it’s hard to “master” a language that changes every generation.
French has entered the chat
damn, bro. It’s almost like America is bigger than all of Europe and shares one language, and it’s hard to become fluent in a language when there’s no one to speak it with. If you are asian or european you can hop in the car or on a train to practice your french or vietnamese, but unless you’re practicing Spanish or some specific language kept in your area(Polish in Chicago, Pennsylvania Dutch, German in some parts of Wisconsin) you have no way to practice.
Not only this, but I’ve met one German speaker irl since german class about 15yr ago. Many times “bilingual” in europe means “X and English,” do German people oft go 15 years without meeting another English speaker? Seems like there’d be one on every corner.
There’s tons of Germans who don’t go a year without being exposed to Catalan so there’s that. Given that the mandatory third language tends to be Romanic (usually French or Latin) it’s not terribly difficult to pick up, either.
What’s true though for pretty much all of Europe is that multilingualism still tends to be solely within the Indo-European family, unless your native language isn’t that is which is quite the minority.
I’ve met two other americans that spoke german after leaving high school, and one of them was in Europe
I have never been in an English speaking country. We learn it because of cultural hegemony
That’s what I’m saying, that is pretty common over there whereas here the only other useful language is spanish (or maybe mandarin depending on location), and that is only to help people who come over and only speak spanish, it isn’t like english which can be necessary for business or culturally just normal due to british occupation. I do think spanish should be a bit bigger of a focus in school but also you’d be 100% fine not knowing it.
