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German, Bavarian and English 😁
Bavarian
On that note, I also understand some Swabian, Franconian, and Austrian.
Dutch, English (Traditional not simplified), and french, and I can understand german but not speak it myself.
Ahh yes the blanket shit on Americans post.
It’s timeless
Blanket 🤔
Include anglo Canadians in there too!
Complaining about bilingual (english + french) positions in the public service is a favorite hobby of anglo public servants, as if the french ones didn’t need to learn a second language to get the job… Heck, it’s not rare to see/hear one argue that french Canadians should just start speaking english and stop bothering them about their “unique culture”…
But hey, it’s not racism… Or so they say 🤷
Americans: “I Don’t think about you guys at all.”
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.
damn, bro. It’s almost like America is bigger than all of Europe and shares one language, and it’s hard to become fluent in a language when there’s no one to speak it with. If you are asian or european you can hop in the car or on a train to practice your french or vietnamese, but unless you’re practicing Spanish or some specific language kept in your area(Polish in Chicago, Pennsylvania Dutch, German in some parts of Wisconsin) you have no way to practice.
Not only this, but I’ve met one German speaker irl since german class about 15yr ago. Many times “bilingual” in europe means “X and English,” do German people oft go 15 years without meeting another English speaker? Seems like there’d be one on every corner.
21% illiteracy is shockingly bad tbh.
Where’d you get that figure? World Population Reveiw puts it at 99%. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/literacy-rate-by-country
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills
https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf
The chart on page 4 seems to put the US literacy rate at about the same as Germany and the UK.
If you didn’t look at this list and ask “Why did they pick these countries and leave out others?” you’re not doing critical thinking. The countries with the highest literacy in the world are almost all either socialist or formerly socialist countries.
Not sure what that has to do with the American literacy rate? Also the reason those countries are on the list is because it only uses oecd member countries (the dark blue ones).
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/406e3430-fc99-408a-8bc8-59297c1525fa.webp
Hexbear blocks externally hosted images so I can’t see that. Can you edit it and put it in the instance properly with copy paste?
because it only uses oecd member countries
Ahh yes, the “international community”.
I’ve edited the comment. The OECD seems to be the only source that breaks down literacy rate into levels. Otherwise every country that is kinda rich has a 99% literacy rate because everyone knows how to read.
This can’t be true… 21% of Americans can’t read?
Gives some perspective on american culture and problems compared to the rest of the world doesn’t it?
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills
I’m all for american self-depreciation but:
“34% of adults who lack proficiency in literacy were born outside the US.”
https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/
I hate to extrapolate data as an idiotic internetter but being born in the US and being illiterate could also be because we have so many immigrants that aren’t set up for success right away and aren’t as concerned with education as they are with meeting their most basic needs.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigration-by-country
So? Takes like six months to teach an adult to read, that’s not an excuse.
Which illustrates her point well. 2/3 were born inside the US then.
Europeos, cuando llegan a México y no pueden hablar Espanol:
“Voy a coger el autobús”
@Lowered_lifted @LambLeeg, también causaría las mismas curiosas miradas y preguntas en Argentina 😂
Americans have trouble with any accent that isn’t the blandest, nails on chalkboard accent.
Once had one ask me if I was speaking English when I spoke to him (for context I am Irish, the north bit)
Bland and nails on chalkboard? That’s like the opposite of bland. Not great, but definitely not bland. Bland is blunt and flat. Nails on chalkboard is shrill, sharp, and grating. I just don’t understand how you can believe both at the same time.
Lol yeah, it’s just the Americans that don’t understand you. Sure…
I mean if you never leave the US (easy to do, it’s gigantic and travel is expensive/people are poor), it’s kinda understandable that you’d struggle with accents because you rarely hear any, let alone other languages. I know americans that have trouble with english accents lmao
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!
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.
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.
/c/badlinguistics
I’ll never understand this attitude that Europeans have towards Americans. I thought we were friends.
North Americans and Europeans are only friends when someone from a different continent is in the room.
They believe themselves superior in every way, including racially. Look up the racist “le 56% face” Nazi memes to see what they think about that.
look up racist memes intentionally
I think I won’t thanks