In our defense, most of us can’t even speak English.
Bit harsh?
Submitted 1 month ago by LadyButterfly@reddthat.com to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/70b9cdfe-7629-4c18-a60a-a25d0293ae77.jpeg
Comments
dreamy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
oxysis@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Depends where you are in the country or how wealthy you are, on whether learning a foreign language is a meaningful thing to do. People who live towards the middle and up north can easily go their entire lives without knowing another language. People who live towards the southern border could get a lot out of knowing Spanish. Towards either coast and knowing another language maybe useful. It’s a massive country that primarily speaks English, so it shouldn’t be a shocker to see that many wouldn’t need to learn a second language. I, myself barely know part of another language. And part of that is, it just isn’t really useful to me since almost no one here speaks another language.
drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 1 month ago
Yeah, I mean fuck us and all we do suck, but I don’t think people outside the US and Canada really grasp how big this place is. A few years ago I drove to Montreal. It’s a 12 hour drive going 100km/h the whole way, and that’s to get to the nearest city that doesn’t speak English by default, a 24 hour drive in any other direction and I would still be surrounded by people speaking English.
oxysis@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
For me it’d be a minimum of a 18 hour drive just to go somewhere where English isn’t always the default. Can be over a day’s journey to the other side of country. It’s just not like Europe where it’s an hour’s of a few hours trip to another country where they speak another language. Instead it’s a several hour trip just to go to the next state over who speaks the same language as me.
There is a lot of fair criticisms to make of our countries, but this isn’t really one of them. Instead you have to look a little deeper to understand the why people here don’t always know a second language.
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 1 month ago
Hard to learn a language when there’s nobody fluent to talk to in that language
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 1 month ago
One of the things Discord is actually good for! I learned Welsh and found a community specifically for practicing talking the language mentored by more experienced people.
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 1 month ago
I don’t want to talk to people online in a different language they’re mean.
lokalhorst@feddit.org 1 month ago
Interesting choice! Why did you decide to learn welsh? Don’t tell me you made a DNA ancestry test and want to follow your heritage…
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
If we are throwing shade at American education, I like to start with statistics and basic logical fallacies.
Chaotic_Altruist@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
If Americans were taught logical fallacies, their society would fall apart
qarbone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I don’t know why you’re sayomg “if.” They are taught logical fallacies, and
gesticulates wildly at nation
If American students were taught to identify and avoid committing logical fallacies, then they’d be in a better place.
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 1 month ago
Yeah, I met americans on the internet too.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 month ago
I don’t understand?
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 1 month ago
USA you mean. (America covers Canada and Mexico and Brazil and… Well you get the picture).
As with anything in the US it’s more complex than that. Most of my friends speak a second language to some degree. German, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and I myself am working on Welsh.
Sure you get plenty of ignorant folk who call it useless, like most of my relatives, but plenty want to learn. US is not really one homogenous culture despite how it might seem at times.
dlhextall@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Not like anglo-canadians bother themselves with learning the official second language of the country.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 month ago
IIRC it’s like that in most european countries with more than one official language, too. Ironically it’s usually the native French speakers who don’t want to learn a different language.
Sunshine@piefed.ca 1 month ago
US is not really one homogenous culture despite how it might seem at times.
You can thank first-past-the-post for the false majorities creating that perception.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 1 month ago
That and Hollywood and pop culture (which would be what I expect other countries interact with the most) likes to homogenize and play to the most common elements.
EffortlessGrace@piefed.social 1 month ago
I’m a citizen of the United States.
I speak 4, besides American English, at various levels of proficiency, but I’m an American-born son of immigrants who splits time between the US and EU (my wife is Dutch). I also enjoy linguistics and etymology.
Even though this is anecdotal, every daughter and son of an immigrant diaspora that I personally know, like me in the US, speaks multiplle languages.
I argue this meme refers to an issue largely for Americans of European descent. Since a very young age, I noticed “white” people in America seem to be scared of “new” or “foreign” things. One of them is learning a language, trying to speak it in public with a native-speaker, and getting corrected for mistakes which will happen, including self-styled “leftists” and “liberals” (the American definition).
I categorize this specific phenomenon, this fear of embarrassment, as another facet or aspect of what some of my black colleagues back in the States refer to as “white fragility”.
Those people who look down on “Americans” should talk to more of us who aren’t of European descent. Perhaps, that may give some depth to your perception of us, or of what our capacity for a global perspective is.
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Dude, I think it’s pretty common everywhere for immigrants and their families to speak multiple languages.
EffortlessGrace@piefed.social 1 month ago
Yes, I’m well aware.
I still think the meme should have “White” in front of “Americans” in its caption.
angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 1 month ago
I mean I don’t think most black Americans know a foreign language either, because most of them aren’t part of an immigrant diaspora. And IIRC, this phenomenon happens to some extent in most predominantly English speaking countries. Most foreign language learning is a matter of practicality more than a desire to expand knowledge or something, and most non-immigrant Americans don’t have any particular reason to learn one.
Miaou@jlai.lu 1 month ago
Congratulations on erasing the 15% of black Americans, clearly a group that’s too privileged to even be mentioned
StillAlive@piefed.world 1 month ago
Black Americans clearly speak two languages:
EffortlessGrace@piefed.social 1 month ago
?
dregan@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Whoever made this needs to LEAN their own native language first.
darthsundhaft@piefed.social 1 month ago
Oh the irony…
sunsofold@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Part of being powerful is a reduction in cognitive load. You don’t have to worry about what those strange foreign language speakers think or want because you have the guns and money. They have to worry about what you want. Being asked to learn another land’s language places them equal or higher in the hierarchy.
You just can’t allow that kind of thinking. I mean, what next, calling foreigners human? /s
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Given that this completely ignores that there are thousands of people who can speak English and their native tribal language I’d say it’s both harsh and ignorant, putting aside that a foreign language was a required class in my high school school.
velma@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Harsh but well deserved hahaha
I’m currently trying to learn Spanish and my goodness gracious. It would have been easier as a child!
oce@jlai.lu 1 month ago
Trust the power of repetition, check the Anki app if you haven’t.
velma@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Anki app
Oh this looks interesting! Thanks for the recommendation!
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 1 month ago
It really helps to have a community too. I found one for Welsh that has weekly chats geared towards learners. Experienced learners have been helping people learn no matter how simple the question. They’ve even started developing games and learning tools in Welsh to help more.
There’s similar communities for most languages I’d wager.
Aedaz_@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I’ve never had use for one.
But I did spend some time learning German and was able to hold conversations to an extent. Was interesting and fun and made some friends (they wanted me to stop trying so hard and just speak English lol).
Sunshine@piefed.ca 1 month ago
They should encourage you to speak Germany. It can suck being a native speaker of the lingua Franca.
espurr@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
T R I G G E R E D
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not really.
kilgore_trout@feddit.it 1 month ago
Yes really. I watched Arrival three times, each time making it worse. That’s the whole plot, unfortunately.
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I travel a fair bit and one of the most embarrassing things is that I’m monolingual. Something like 4-5 BILLION people are 2+ languages. And then there’s me from a rich nation with a solid education, trying my best to speak the local language, just to have the other person step in with perfect English out of pure sympathy.
But, hey, people love that you make the effort. It’s like the joy of seeing a 3 year-old count to 10…except you’re an adult trying to say, “Could I have two, please?”
“Oh! That was very good!”
3 year-old grin on my adult face
cattywampas@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Something like 4-5 BILLION people are 2+ languages.
If I had to guess, I’d say this number is way smaller if you don’t include people who speak English as a second language.
iatenine@piefed.social 1 month ago
¿Qué?
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I grew up in California, and moved to New Mexico. I should have taken Spanish in high school, instead of French.
Most people who speak more than one language also speak English, so I don’t really NEED to learn another language. Also, I don’t talk to people much.
Kintarian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Next they lern to spel
mriormro@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Speak for yourself and your shitty memes.
kalpol@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
The short story by Ted Chiang is really sad
ebc@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Isn’t the girl from Québec in the movie? They go get her from a university in Montreal, if I remember correctly…
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 month ago
Lean
Oh, the irony.
cattywampas@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If we had a different language in each state there would be a lot more Americans who spoke several.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
America has 300 different answers for “what language do you speak at home with family”.
Three hundred.
You could have 6 different languages per state, with no overlap, just by shuffling people around.
Tja@programming.dev 1 month ago
You have a different language in each house. If you want to learn or practice a new language, you’ll find speakers in any community.
wieson@feddit.org 1 month ago
You have at least one Native American language in most states.
oce@jlai.lu 1 month ago
Sense of wonder from discovering how different people from different places think similarly or differently of the same experiences, or different experiences you never thought about.
Otherwise, maybe trying to interact with the immigrants probably covering the essential jobs in his small town that nobody else wants to do.
grte@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I mean, I’m sure some percentage of people who learn a language use it for that reason. But the vast, vast majority of time someone learns a another language it’s going to be because they expect to use it, I imagine.
Sunshine@piefed.ca 1 month ago
I heard from others say “they’re not your tutor” and they just switch back to English with me 😭
velma@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
We have a huge population of spanish speaking people here.
IncogCyberSpaceUser@piefed.social 1 month ago
I don’t understand this post or why you said “Lean”. Can someone explain? :(
Beehaw_Girl@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Image
You might notice the word “lean” somewhere up there. That’s a typo that OOP unintentionally & ironically made while mocking people for their perceived linguistics shortcomings.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The post says “lean” instead of “learn”.