Excuse me, but as an American I take offense to this meme. I speak 4 languages, English, Southern, Bostonian, and Spanish /s
Spanish
I refuse to believe any
American can speak Spanish well.(this is a joke)
Ahh yes the blanket shit on Americans post.
It’s timeless
A classic
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 would of knew itd turn out this way
Blanket 🤔
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 🧐
Americans: “I Don’t think about you guys at all.”
The distance from Atlanta to LA is about the same as the distance between Paris and Beirut. There is somewhat less linguistic diversity on the Altanta/LA route than the Paris/Beirut route (because of the genocide).
There’s actually significantly more but you’d have to stop ignoring indigenous languages. Look, all those different families whereas from Paris to Beirut it’s Indo-European over Turkic to Semitic, that’s all (assuming you manage to avoid Hungary, that’s Uralic, just like Finns, Sami and and Estonians. Then there’s the Basques, but that’s really it. Yes Albanian is Indo-European even if it’s hardly recognisable).
Of those languages, the population is very small and centralized to the point of being not noteworthy as a factor in language learning. This is not to mention that the map you’ve cited was a pre-contact linguistic graph, and unfortunately many of those languages have become extinct with their unique aspects lost forever to humanity. Compared to Europe, the states have become a desert of language with few natural language learning opportunities outside of English and Spanish
Many indians speak 4+ languages easily , and we dont even notice that 😅
Isn’t India in 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?
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…
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.
SEA PROBABLY , however India , pakistan , sri lanka and bangladesh are considered a subcontinent coz similar cultures , and are different from rest of asia !
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.
Clearly, this dude voted to become mr. worldwide
How well do you speak those languages? For example, can you order pizza with pineapple and olives any of those languages? What if the pizza you get is cold, the 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
Hello! 👋 We’re mostly on monyet.cc on Lemmy.
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 !
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.
Um, plenty of Europeans speak 3 or more languages. Native language, language of the country you’re living in, and English.
German, Bavarian and English 😁
Bavarian
On that note, I also understand some Swabian, Franconian, and Austrian.
This. I think european and asian should be swapped in this meme. I think its rarer to see asian speak 3 languages than seeing european speak 3 languages
Surely that depends on where in Asia you’re looking at as well? On average, the number of languages people speak is quite different between, say, India and Japan. Or Switzerland vs Romania in Europe.
“Hey let me just make a quick generalization about like three billion people”.
As an asian, this has been my experience as well. Of course there are exceptions, but most asians I know (not just in my country) usually just speak 2 languages.
But which part of Asia are you from? Here in India, schools are required (at least on paper) to teach three languages, so most people are at least trilingual.
Dutch, English (Traditional not simplified), and french, and I can understand german but not speak it myself.
Belgian spotted
Nah, Netherlands
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！
I understood “pain in the ass”, did I pass the test?
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.
Pretending not to know is the preferable choice for me.
What were we talking about?
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.
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.
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.
I’m sure it has, but not everyone lives (lived?) in Reddit like you.
I am a bilingual illiterate. I cannot read or write in 2 different languages.
Why speak human languages when you can be cat meow nyaaaa meow meow
同志们，我们现在加入了 Lemmy 党。打到 Reddit 邪党！Lemmy 万岁 万岁 万万岁！
这句子绝对不是用 Google翻译 翻译出来的。
Oh wow can’t believe I actually remember learning words from 2nd grade. Like long long ago, haven’t used that language in over a decade. Somehow I can remember a decade old language I don’t even use anymore, but not my Bitwarden password.
Please, keep that simplified bull shit out of Lemmy.
Sorry I’m a former Mainland Chinese (now US Citizen), can’t keep that habit out of me 😅
What exactly is wrong with simplified? The only beef I have with it is it makes it harder for me to transfer my Japanese Kanji to Hanzi.
I’m guessing the person is a Taiwanese and have a beef with simplified users.
Hey we speak two languages…English and Bad english…
Corporate and Common
