Poll of the Day > Surprised by the amount of people that only know one language

(+) Yeah! (+)

Honestly baffling.

The Americas are not particularly cosmopolitan.

I don't need to for my day-to-day needs.

It's hard to do and there's no point.

We don't talk about the poll.

To be fair, many of us are not particularly good with that single language.

If you live in Kansas youre not learning another language

Falcon2852 posted...

It's hard to do and there's no point.

This is wrong, its definitely related to and supported by/supports other mental abilities

A few years ago people were eating laundry detergent.

Why are you surprised?

Americans are getting more and more proudly ignorant.
Had a lady literally ask, "why would i be bilingual, I'm American?". It's more defensive than anything. If someone speaks anything besides English, it can feel like a secret code and then fomo happens

I know *some* Spanish, French, German, and Japanese

But being familiar with certain words and phrases =/= "fluent"

pedro45 posted...

Americans are getting more and more proudly ignorant.

Several years ago my husband and I were working on a large tech project for a local school district. Besides the two of us, there were 7 other techs.

At one point the subject turned to books and all the other techs were boasting about the fact that they didn't read anything. We were both absolutely appalled. These were all people working in the IT field, who should be smarter than the average person, or at least more inclined to intellectual pursuits, and here we are finding out they are all as vapid as everyone else. I could have understood if they didn't have time to read, but just flat out refusing to read? And they were proud of it!

Lokarin posted...

The Americas are not particularly cosmopolitan.

To be fair the only other language here thats even somewhat useful outside of something very niche or just personal interest is Spanish, and even that is largely dependent on where you live in the US. Also speaking English just kind of comes with the perk that if a non native English speaker knows a second language theres a very good chance that its English.

Falcon2852 posted...

It's hard to do and there's no point.

it's only hard to do because you never learned a 2nd language as a child.
children regularly exposed to a 2nd language will pick it up without effort, and it allows them to develop a language switching skill to make learning more languages at a later age much easier.

watching foreign TV shows with subtitles can be very effective.

Where i live in the USA is dont need one as 99% of people around me speak english. Though I do know it would be a benefit to learn Spanish or another language and would definitely enrich the mind.

Though i did take Spanish in high school and I bet i could become a passable low level speaker without a ton of effort now because I learned some of the base already in the past

There is little need here unless you do business internationally. If you live in the US, you're in close proximity to... other people in the US mostly, unless you live right on the border of Canada or Mexico.

If you live on the border to Canada, people more than likely also speak English unless you're near quebec

In Asia, most people only know English as a 2nd language and no other languages because they're taught it from a young age due to it's prevalence internationally.

Europeans may know some of the languages of their neighbors because of close proximity and the vast similarities between certain their languages, and many are also taught English from a young age.

Other than Spanish, it makes little sense to pour time into learning another language here. Even with spanish, you probably wont ever use it more than at a basic level unless it happens to be important for your job which isnt common

I don't really see why it should surprise you? Some people want to learn. Some people really struggle to learn. Some live in a bilingual family and pick it up naturally. Some simply have no interest in learning. That's all okay, different strokes people.

Lokarin posted...

The Americas are not particularly cosmopolitan.

Yeah we stupid

I'm surprised by the number of people who aren't fluent in 10+ languages. I'm fluent (can carry a lengthy conversation) in 16 languages. Honestly baffling more people aren't on my level

They tried to teach me French and Ukrainian.
Failed both. I either don't have the aptitude, or my teachers sucked

Im surprised you find it surprising. Its not exactly a new thing.

Kanaya413 posted...

Yeah we stupid

If the Internet has taught me anything, it's that stupidity is universal.

The only difference is what particular flavor of stupid any given country/region tends to favor.

I speak a fair amount of Spanish and I can get by in German. I know extremely basic Dutch.

Its not good, but its really not surprising for English speaking folks. I know plenty of people who get by just fine with just English despite living in Vietnam.

Also, I speak other languages, but I wouldnt say Im fluent in them.

as the languages slowly blend this will probably get more common.

dj1200 posted...

I speak a fair amount of Spanish and I can get by in German. I know extremely basic Dutch.

I probably know as much Dutch as is shared with German or close to it. And I'm half "Dutch".

Nade_Duck posted...

as the languages slowly blend this will probably get more common.

And if Google has anything to say about it with their forced AI translation

A lot of Western Anglophone countries are mostly monolingual (United States, Canada outside of Quebec, Australia, United Kingdom, etc.) and some people criticism them for this. However, something to keep in mind is that English is practically a necessity in countries where it's not the primary language. English is the current global franca and you need to be able to speak it to some extent to have a chance in the global market. Western English speaking countries don't have that pressure or necessity. It's not unhelpful to learn (I'm bilingual myself in both English and Spanish) but it's understandable why these stations don't prioritize them in ways that others don't.

And it's not just Anglophone western countries. Having lived for a time in Latin America, a majority of people are monolingual. Obviously not everyone, but the majority only do speak Spanish (as least in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico).

That's fine. Some people don't have the chance to learn more languages. The problem is when they complain about you not knowing another language. In that case, it's their hypocrisy that's upsetting.

When you speak from the heart you transcend language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEZg48d6USo&list=RDIEZg48d6USo&start_radio=1