Comment

Comment on name too hard? brain go ouch! Vote red.

Aaand thats why americans only knowing english is a stereotype. The average person on earth speaks more than one language, its only in priviledged imperialist states like russia, usa, china and some poor monocultural countries that its normal to speak one language. Everywhere else you either learn em cause you need it, its prestige or because its good practice to be able to speak to others in their own language. There are many places in europe where knowing three or four languages are not unusual and lets not even talk about africa where there were entire trading tribes whos whole thing was knowing a bunch of languages.

source

Sort:hotnew top

AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
China and Russia are both large diverse countries where different people speak different languages …… and the central government strongly encourages a common one. I wager you’re wrong about them

source
- AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Yeah but theyre all marginalized and only people who grew up with it speak it. Theres a difference between learning a language youre not related to in any capacity just because its culturally relevant or something and learning a language because youre born with it. There are extremely few second language nganasan, ket, komi, erzya, etc speakers who arent also part of the ethnic group. Thats why people learning languages like cree, navajo, nuxalk, etc as second languages as white americans just because they can is such a beautiful thing. Youre ancestors have taken so much from them but youre trying to make it right. Point is, the vast majority of white, orthodox russians only speak russian and maybe english.
  
  source
- chunes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Ironically, America is also much more linguistically rich than that person who doesn’t live here is assuming.
  
  source
MortUS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

The average person on earth speaks more than one language

8 Billion people on this planet, the average is absolutely not more than 1 language.

source
- Spezi@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I would say that the vast majority of people speaks at least one language. Even americans usually speak a language. Now if you are talking about a secondary language, numbers are definitely lower.
  
  source
- AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  “It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world’s population.”
  
  source
  - DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    According to the US census, there are 76 million multilingual people, 23% of the population. In March 2025 the White House released an executive order declaring, “…it is in America’s best interest for the Federal Government to designate one — and only one — official language” (The White House). In 2021 there were 5.3 million students receiving English Language Learner services.[104] Additionally, Net immigration rates have drastically increased since 2021 from 247,000 to 2.8 million in 2024 (US census).
    
    Trump wants to keep Americans unilingual.
    
    source
- g0d0fm15ch13f@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  So if you have 10 people and just 1 of them speaks two languages and everyone else only speaks one lets do some math.
  
  11 tongues/10 persons = 1.1 average languages per person
  
  1.1 > 1
  
  “The average person on earth speaks more than one language” is absolutely true purely mathematically
  
  source