I always hope that everyone speaks English and if they seem worried about how it sounds I remind them that their English is way better than my their language which usually breaks the ice.
Heard someone say this on reddit many years ago after someone was being a wise ass about their English which was obviously second or third language
You speak English because it’s the only language you know; I speak English because it’s the only language you know We are not the same
That’s pretty funny, but I’m years past accepting the “hurr durr ignorant american knows only one language” thing. Except as a response to someone harassing someone about their English capabilities, as seems to be the case in your example. 😁
The way I figure it, if the people two states away from me in every direction spoke a different language from me, and from each other, I’d probably be multilingual, too. (As would most of us)
Is this not fairly likely in the US with Mexican Spanish or/and Canadian/Cajun French?
Within the USA, the language enclaves aren’t strong enough. You might find people who can’t speak English, but there are enough people in their communities that can speak English that you can get along.
Of the countries I’ve visited so far, I find that Mexico has the strongest language barrier as Mexico is large enough to maintain an internal standard of Mexican Spanish. Outside of the northern border states, you can drive two states away in Mexico and still have people speak Spanish.
No, because these people are also highly likely to also know English and the vast, vast majority of people in any given location speak English as a default in public. Unless another language is being commonly spoken in public, it isn’t even close to having entire states speak a different language.
Not whole states, but Miami gets close.
I’m sure there are people who go to Mexico/Canada as often as Europeans seem to be popping into other countries, but most of us very rarely do.
But most of us do have to visit other states often, which works out to a similar radius as hopping countries in Europe in many cases, that’s why I made the comparison I did.
I can restrict my bullying to those living near the Mexican border and the English
Most people I’ve talked to who know English as a second language speak and read and understand it better than most American’s I’ve spoken to who know only English.
Yeah I hung out with a bunch of Germans who were really good English speakers but constantly were self critical of their English skills. They were beating my German skills by a landslide even at their worst moments.
Even if you speak Thai, complaining about someone’s foreign language abilities as a foreigner is rude.
Implying the sign isn’t talking about Australians who visit in the same numbers
But America dumbo!
And perhaps Brits and Canadians. I’m not sure about their visit numbers though.
Or anybody in europe who probably speaks english as thats the “world language”
Unless they’re from a primarily English speaking country, they’d be unlikely to complain though.
I’ve met lots of people who seem to hold the sentiment that if THEY managed to learn English, why can’t EVERYONE ELSE?
Sounds like they have something to compensate for. ┐( ∵ )┌
Yeah they wouldnt complain… except if theyre my grandfather who started complaining in vietnam to a hotel receptionist that they dont speak hungarian, a language about 14 million people speak in the world and the only language it has mutual intelligibility with is spoken by about 10000 people…
Wait, in that case maybe complaining is a bit justified? Different of course of it’s a place off the beaten path, but if it’s a hotbed of English-speaking tourists then having staff that speak their language seems pretty important.
Guess it’s really hard to say without more context (story of the internet).
I don’t even know why some native speakers complain about having to deal with broken English when the learner only needs to know a tiny fraction of the language to be intelligible. As long as they have the vocab, grammar is mostly optional.
I can’t wait for us to start exploring the galaxy and giving aliens shit for not speaking English lol
I’m sawwry, I don’t speak ‘at squeaky squacky, beep boop shit. Why don’t you try talking like an American?! You’re in American space space!
Just remember that any Americans vacationing in other countries are Americans who can afford to travel to take a vacation in other countries (and can even take that long of a vacation at all), and that explains the sense of entitlement and rudeness you see which gives Americans a bad name.
Also except for Canada and Mexico (and even for them depending on where in US you live, to get anywhere is a very long, expensive plane trip).
Yes true but that statement is also true for anyone else. Yet you don’t see that sense of entitlement
What statement are you referring to? The point that it’s far more expensive to travel from North America to a country in Europe for example, than it is to travel between countries in Europe? Maybe Thailand would be as expensive for both, though, I don’t know. Or the point that most Americans get much less vacation time than Europeans so again, only the more privileged Americans generally have the time off to take an overseas vacation.
Of course some regular people also take those vacations, but it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime big deal that they saved up for a long time as a dream. Those aren’t the ones acting entitled, they are appreciating the opportunity.
I’m American and I am continually shocked and grateful how commonly I’m catered to internationally. I mean it’s not fair in a sense but also there does need to be a global language and the English happened to be the right kind of assholes to win that honor.
It’s not necessarily just for Americans. English is the most spoken language in the world when you include people’s second language. That German tourist probably isn’t going to know Thai and that Thai cafe probably isn’t going to know German, but they can muddle though with English.
Right. I was addressing the title of the post. I am assuming Americans are among the worst among presuming English should be spoken everywhere, but I don’t fall into that category. I marvel at the fact that it’s so widely spoken.
It’s always so foreign to me that anglophones never need to switch to English to communicate internationally, that’s just their everyday language
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy to me and I’m an anglophone who barely knows other languages. It’s a marvel.
To be fair. Learning english is a must nowadays. The closest we have to an universal language.
And I say it as a non-native English speaker.
As a developer in a non English speaking country, in the last decade having English in your resume has moved from nice-to-have to mandatory, now the nice to have is having a third one.
A third what?
Eye. Clairvoyance really helps with bug testing.
Language
Ahhh
Language.
One random thought I had about this the other day was that I feel sort of bad for the British, Irish, Americans and Australians. Well, the monolingual ones.
Anytime they go abroad, it’s like “oh they didn’t even bother to learn the language”, but then when we who didn’t grow up on English do, we’ve already learned at least English, so not knowing the local language is somehow more understandable. Or perhaps people don’t feel that way, but it’s just a thought I had. Like it feels less polite when a native English speaker just addresses someone in English in a foreign country, but if a non-English speaker asks “do you speak English” with broken English, it’s much more… sympathetic.
I’m just babling nevermind me.
I do agree with you though and can’t really understand people in my country who still say they can’t speak English. I mean, people who still use the internet and consume media that’s in English. I don’t get it. Language acquisition gets worse sure, but it’s never gone away from me at least. I watch one season of some show in a language I don’t understand and I already start picking up the very basics. Nothing I could use, surely, but like my brain is clearly structuring and trying to make sense of the language, so with enough exposition to a language…
The Irish are increasingly bilingual it’s just that they’re learning their own language, not anyone else’s
I know, and I’m sorry for not putting up a further disclaimer, but the English have destroyed so many cultures and languages that listing them all would’ve just taken up too much space.
Gabh mo leiscéal, I have the utmost respect for the Irish.
I watch one season of some show in a language I don’t understand
I wish my brain worked that way; I’d be watching Finnish television and movies all day, every day.
I watch a fair number of shows in Swedish or Norwegian, and I’ve never picked up anything from what they’re saying. I always have to have subtitles.
I have to admit that this doesn’t work nearly as well when I’m watching anything Asian. I mean I’ve got a tiny tiny tiny understanding of the things Japanese people put at the end of words and I can now hear those a little after watching the samurai show that came out what was it. Absolutely amazing.
Uh… “Shōgun”, yeah.
Anyway, it works much better for PIE-languages, and obviously the easiest ones are Nordic/Germanic, seeing as they’re coursing languages to English and I know Swedish.
I think having a native non-PIE language really helped, as once I learned English properly (and had some Swedish) the others just started making sense more or less. Eastern European languages are harder, but I haven’t watched any shows in Polish yet…
Finnish must be a fucking nightmare, seeing how many grammatical cases we have and those are applied to all words in a sentence basically. So just modifying the verb will mean that you probably have to conjugate every other word differently.
Like one simple example “I want a car” “haluan auton” but do you want your car (you not thee, so plural second person) would be “haluatteko autonne” but if you want to say “would you like to have your car” it’s “haluaisitteko autonne”, and in the singular second person it’s “haluatko auton”, but also in informal Finnish you can sometimes drop the conjugations and indeed using them might seem too formal, and also you’d use some sort of dialect so in reality second person singular informal would be “haluaks auton”, but you can also put in the word for you “sinä”, (which informally is mostly “sä”) and its the same thing “haluaks sä auton”, but if you change it to “haluaks sun auton” it becomes “do you want your car”.
Whops rant. I’ve had a glög. My point being Finnish must be crazy hard to learn. I’d need to learn an Asian language to get into that whole market of languages better.
I’ve always been into languages though, and didn’t even need to be taught to read, as I picked it up myself from newspapers, as I was annoyed my older brother had a skill I did not.
When I watched the latest season of Babylon Berlin, I dreamt in German for a few times. And I do not speak it enough to have a conversation. Enough to order in a restaurant, sure, but not enough to chat like in my dreams.
I understand the chorus from that song, and some of the Lyrics. I just wish I was in a position to go live abroad for a few years, I’d like to see how fast I become fluent in some of these European languages I’m somewhat primed for. Plus they legalised weed in Germany, so that’s another good reason as well.
Finnish must be a fucking nightmare
It is. I’m Estonian, it’s the closest related language to Finnish, and I’ve found nearly any other language easier to pick up on than Finnish.
Apparently on average, it’s easier for Estonians to Understand Finnish than it is for Finns to understand Estonian.
One of those asymmetric mutual intelligibility things. Interesting video, that.
It’s been years since I had glög; I should make that again since it’s starting to get chilly.
Unfortunately, part of living in the US is that most people aren’t exposed to other languages to any significant degree. If you are a native American English speaker, and grow up in a large city, you might hear enough Spanish to learn it, but that’s about it. I learned Spanish in school, but there was no opportunity to practice until I moved to a large city close to the Mexican border.
From what I gather from culture, I’d say Spanish is like a tiny bit more prevalent in the US than Swedish is in Finland. And this varies city to city, of course. I live in a city which used to be capitol while we were under Swedish rule: Turku / Åbo. I think the city actually having two such different names is a bit of a giveaway. The Finnish names derives from “marketplace”, whereas the Swedish means “a dwelling by the river”.
I don’t much use Swedish either. I had to use it for customer service some, but even that was years ago so my vocabulary is pretty shit. A lot of the Western Finnish coastal cities are bilingual and have a somewhat significant Swedish speaking population, but it’s honestly rare to even hear Swedish being spoken on the street. A few cities are mainly Swedish speaking people though, but not Turku. And from that side, Spanish is less prevalent in the States, as I can’t think of entire cities which basically have Spanish as their main language, just cities with very large populations of Spanish speakers. Also, a huge difference is that in the States, Mexicans and people from even further South are often seen as socioeconomically lower generally, whereas we have a saying “Svenska talande bättre folk”, meaning roughly “better people speak Swedish”.
But yeah, all the media I watch is in a language I wasn’t born with, so I’m always learning. Even with English, can always learn. Just reminded me of this sketch. German wants to watch a foreign films.
I love shows which have multiple languages. Like mainly English, but then there’s significant bits with simple-ish conversations in other languages. It’s like you get to have a bit of language practice in the middle of enjoying a show/movie.
I’ve gone a bit overboard with the glög in the past few weeks, lol. Tasted too good, and I’m sort of doing science here. I’ve been trying exclusion diets and finally figured out something that’s bothered me my entire life, and now I genuinely don’t even get a hangover despite drinking quite heavily. Very weird. If drinking was this easy when I was a kid, I’d have definitely abused alcohol. I could never drink two days in a row as a kid, just couldn’t do it and didn’t understand how others could.
Here:
I got these glasses, uh… mugs? which are like from my grandma (she’s still alive though but moved to a home so we emptied most of the house). Real silver, I think, because of how it feels and how it’s darkened. I tried polishing the other one with some toothpaste the other day, seemed to work, but didn’t really make it shiny shiny. Just took a lot of the oxidation off.
There’s so many delicious glögs on Alko (the central shop for anything above 8% in Finland, monopolised govt owned alcohol shops, “offies” basically.) Raspberry, bilberry, one which is brandy and mulled wine. All delicious. Add a bit of rum and were off. Cheers!
I feel like I’d struggle learning Hindi like that
Given enough time and some sort of foundation to build on, like an understanding of a related language, I’m sure you could do it.
It’s weird how most people just give up on language acquisition after acquiring one.
But not when theyre kids. As kids, you honestly are just a sponges for any languages you hear.
After 27 or so it’s probably harder (neural plasticity seems to slowly down at 27, some sort of cause or correlation with culture idk, but it happens), but definitely still doable.
I have no idea how long it would take me, but when watching shows, I always have subs, so even if I don’t know any of the language, you start picking up words. First it’s just the proper nouns which you can pick up, names of places and people, then it’s the words relating to those nouns, and soon it’s common verbs and then you can basically form two word sentences (want beer, am hungry, go away, etc) and then it’s just more and more exposure to the language and you’ll get it eventually.
I can speak Thai so I guess I’m okay
I can’t speak Thai but I am not complaining because I’m not an asshole
Why are people from the USA always called Americans?
Because they’re the only country with America in their name whereas United States is shared by Mexico
Also in English there’s a distinction between North and South America, with the supercontinent being referred to as “The Americas”, so America isn’t really ambiguous, they’re also geologically and environmentally distinct enough that “The Americas” isn’t used so much and “New World” is often more relevant to include Australia as another somewhat culturally similar sparsely populated former colonial area.
So is someone from Brazil an “American”? Surprisingly yes, and straight to jail.
In Portuguese (as spoken in Portugal, Brazil, USA, Japan, Ghana, wherever) they’re an americano/a but in English (as spoken in USA, UK, Brazil, Portugal, Nepal, wherever) they’re South American but not American because it’s a linguistic difference rather than a geographical/cultural one
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.
While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
Ireland is part of the British Isles, so you could even call people from the Republic of Ireland british (and then run away really fast).
I recommend not doing this 😂 I prefer to call the British isles “the European archipelago” :)
TEA
For exactly those reasons at least Ireland no longer calls it the British Isles
And saying North America includes Canada, and I think out of respect to the Canadians they don’t wanna be lumped together with us
Why does someone always smugly point this out in these threads?
Because there’s always got to be some young “boo America” edgelord contrarian that thinks they’re really doing something by saying it. But really they are just an idiot in a long line of idiots who isn’t saying anything at all.
US Americans are seen by basically everyone as the most obnoxious tourists on this planet. Their self importance and undeserved national pride is second to none and it shows in every thread like this. Its just fun to see them get defensive when anyone points it out.
This is literally what that sign is about and its odd that you are confused that people would point this out.
Why are you assuming the sign is about Americans? There’s no reference to the US anywhere except OP’s title
Speaking of obnoxious self importance
No youuu 😭
Is all i get from that.
Because calling anyone else an American is insulting.
USAmerican, USAian, USAn, lUSA?
Unitedstatians. Thats how we call them here (estadounidense)
USAmerican is my go to yep.
Are you joking though? I’ve never heard this phrase uttered out loud except by that one miss America contestant who was derided for being stupid.
Judging by their instance they’re german where “US-Amerikaner” is a pretty common term, never heard it used in english though.
Found the lUSA
what?
Would you prefer “yanks”?
Just what people commonly understand so people say it. I always read it in a disapproving Russian accent because of too much TV, the americans
So here’s something wild I learned.
To Canadians, when I speak French, I have a very thick American accent. However, when I speak English to Canadians, they really can’t tell my accent (presumably because I live in a bordering state?).
I always respect anyone who knows just enough English to communicate something simple/frequent. Because there is no fucking way they’d understand what I was trying to say in their language.
Man that’s crazy, I speak French with an undertone of a Belgian accent, but pretty close to French general accent (I know every dept has their accent, chill!), but Canadians have an extremely heavy and weird non standard accent compared to other people.
Language is strange man
Incredible our brains can make sense of any of it sometimes
I’m not American but I also assume everyone speaks English. Other languages are cool but they’re just not very useful. I’ve almost forgotten my native language at this point.
I guess that really depends on your location
Jesus Christ
No, I don’t think he spoke English.
Sumerian
I think OP means there aren’t a lot of use-cases where a non-english language is helpful in communicating more than english is. Like if you learn swahili, there aren’t a lot of people around the world who speak that language, and you’re unlikely to run into any of them. Millions of people speak swahili, and I’m sure that it has wonderful elements (as all languages do), but there are way more english speakers, and english is spoken in many more places around the world
With that mindset they probably live somewhere where English is the main language. I can’t imagine why a Swedish speaker for example would think “eh English is more important I’ll just use that instea” lmao.
Or they’re terminally online or work in an industry where English is the default language. I definitely use more English than Estonian throughout the day, but the English is nearly all written and the Estonian is mostly spoken.
What does that even matter anymore really? Only corpos worth slaving for are global, with a good WFH gig you’ll have colleagues from all over the globe and you ain’t gonna be speaking Swedish to 'em. Globalization means countries also want to be open to other nationalities. Sure it’s good to learn other languages, and I like it, but most everywhere knowing good English will open more doors than good of any other language, provided that you have at least a basic utilitarian grasp of the majority spoken language of where you live
I can’t anything more obnoxious than a native speaker switching to English when talking with other native speakers to be more ✨global✨ or whatever.
I always speak English with all my friends who also speak (and are by origin) Russian because we live in England and find it easier since it’s the language we use more. Plus everything else is in English so it’s just extra effort to find words to talk about it in Russian, like translating a movie quote instead of just quoting it.
It’s not there to upset you by being “global”, it’s a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
Kinda sad to forgo your own language like that but it is what it is and you do you.
Man, that bugs me how many Americans are out there giving the rest of us a bad name. I don’t travel, but if I did, I’d be grateful a non-native English speaker knew any English at all. And not learning enough of their language to at least get you by for the trip just sounds like poor planning in general. Some people are just incapable of looking before they leap, and for some reason a bunch of those people travel.
I’ve been to a few other countries. The people (especially retail workers) are extremely patient. All it takes is a smile and “excuse me” and they will try as hard as they can to build a communication bridge. I don’t know why we Americans have no patience
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I think you should go take a nice walk. Could do wonders for you
I got confused, I was replying to daniskarma below this op
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because they’re frequently proven right, English is the most commonly spoken second language after all
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Americans who can afford to travel abroad are generally more wealthy, and tend to be more over entitled in all aspects of their lives
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BECAUSE ENGLISH ALWAYS WORKS IF YOU CAN SPEAK IT LOUD ENOUGH
Are there still people that use an accent of the country that they are in but using English words expecting the native person to understand them?
That vaguely works in Japan, because they have a ton of English loanwords, and a lot of them wouldn’t be understood by a monolingual Japanese speaker unless you say them in a Japanese accent (it’s a bit more complicated than that but that’s the gist).
as if it’s not the english making this complaint
