This seems like the weirdest thing to dunk on Americans for. Like, yeah, Americans can't read things in a language they're not fluent in, and... neither can anyone else?
People should at least know some basic vocabulary and conversational sentences. That should get you by for nuanced and often deeply contextual political analysis from 100 years ago, right?
Why? Basic skills would absolutely not get you through an old French text from 100 years ago. There'd be so many archaic forms of words to bog you down. Translations exist these days. Learning a language is absolutely not paramount for learning revolutionary skills.
EDIT: i think you may have been being sarcastic but I'm leaving it anyway
Yeah, that's my point. The meme is criticizing americans for needing theory to be translated into english. Which seems to be adjacent to some valid criticisms, but dosen't make sense as is.
I'll admit I was making fun of the meme for using vague, unfocused sarcasm against its target, and I did it by using slightly more pointed sarcasm, so it's fair you misunderstood me.
This is only useful if you are likely to run into people that speak another language. Without that you just lose any fluency or phrases even ignoring their lack of utility at that point.
Be me, be socially uncomfortable, learning tourist German while in Germany, panics every time I tried to talk to a German and only high school Spanish would come out.
A McDonald's flying their M flag half mast because of a mass shooting close by? Accidental absurdist comedy. I'm not laughing at classist "fly-over states" jokes, I am laughing at this shit
:tito-laugh: lmao those able-bodied neurotypical cisgender heterosexual upper middle class white suburban American nuclear families who, due to immediate material conditions created from two centuries of lingual-cultural oppression, have only been taught a single language, inadequately, thanks to their deteriorating educational system caused by racist tax systems which crumble under global economic duress.
due to immediate material conditions created from two centuries of lingual-cultural oppression
Implies "and were not born into multilingual families who were forced onto these circumstances due to capital's debilitating force", but maybe I wasn't giving enough details, so my bad if it was unclear.
I’m not really trying to pile onto whatever back and forth you’re having. This is just where I happened to ask the question. It’s confusing me that the reason people are acting like we don’t speak more languages is that we don’t have good enough formal education. I thought it was because we have significantly less linguistic diversity because of all the genocide and colonial culture. Like I need to drive for over 24 hours straight before I’m in an area where the majority of people don’t speak English as their first language. And even in the county I grew up in where like a third of people speak Spanish, our towns and schools are still so segregated that I spent the first 15 years of my life having spoken to an ESL person.
It’s confusing me that the reason people are acting like we don’t speak more languages is that we don’t have good enough formal education.
I think this misconception stems from west-EU people focusing on white middle class people and seeing language as a "fun skill" to pick up on in highschool, not understanding the class based historical intricacies to it as you described.
I think that is the most common or at least the most visible experience, yes. There are school districts here where the policy is that if a child doesn’t speak English, they are not to speak another language in the classroom, other students are not allowed to translate, and the tests and assignments they receive must be in English. But these kids, again, tend to be segregated out of nearly-all-white schools and just end up as the quiet kid in the back and no one bothers asking why they “refuse to participate”.
The most effective means of learning a language is immersion. You can supplement with other techniques to speed up, but without it it’s pretty much impossible to reach fluency. It’s how every human being forever has learned their first language. See o it would make sense that the #1 predictor of speaking multiple languages is just the number of languages spoken around you
i'm sorry, but a lot (most tbh) people who speak multiple languages live in worse conditions than the average american. the main reason americans are monolingual is cultural, not due to their own immediate material conditions.
The nearest city where English is not the majority language by a large margin is about 600 miles away from me, or about the distance between Paris and Vienna. My immediate material condition is that since I can't afford to travel, I don't do international business, and I will likely never be in a city that isn't majority English speaking for the rest of my life, there is no pressing material need to learn any other languages. Many if not most Americans are in the same position; The international lingua franca is their native language, they cannot afford to travel to places where other languages are spoken, and unless they live in the Southwest they will probably not interact with populations that speak another language for most of their lives.
i think the lingua franca argument is pretty strong. i was gonna add it to my initial comment but i had some stuff to do and opted not to. americans still have a reputation of only knowing English even when compared to other anglophone countries though. i know Europeans make fun of the English for the exact same reason, but i feel like on a global level America is still the worst when it comes to this.
and i feel like in your comment it also shows how it's a bit cultural, you only pointed out utilitarian reasons for learning a language, which is a bit like pointing out utilitarian reasons for looking at art.
please don't take this personally because i don't mean to be rude to americans personally, it's just an observation and a critique of the idea that America is somehow an uniquely awful country for the working class.
I'm not saying America is good or bad for the working class, just that there are very immediate material reasons why learning a second language is not only of low utility value, but also very difficult because there are few opportunities to organically use that language in your day to day life.
that isn't really a charitable interpretation of what i said lol
what i meant to convey is that trying to explain the fact that americans don't speak other languages solely with the fact that they don't have the means to doesn't really stick when it's objectively one of the better countries in the world to live in, despite how god awful it still is. it's not like the rest of the world live more comfortable lives.
Look, there are two material reasons why Americans don't often learn other languages. The first is that they usually don't need to: English is the most widely spoken language in the world. People from poorer countries might have to have more than one language for one reason or another just to get by.
The second goes to what you're saying about comfortable lives: yes, Americans are more comfortable in many ways than most other people. But they don't enjoy the kind of social-democratic benefits that Europeans typically enjoy, which means they often don't have the time to learn other skills or travel internationally like Europeans do. It's hard to find the time to learn a language or experience another culture when your government doesn't mandate paid leave.
Anyway, this shit is so petty. I just don't understand why self-described communists would ever make fun of millions of people for a lack of education in a foreign language. That's the kind of shit liberals do.
i'm not making fun of Americans for not speaking another language. i'm at most critiquing and poking fun at american culture. speaking other languages isn't just knowledge, it's a door for a deeper understanding of other cultures and peoples. americans being monolingual is also a reflection of american exceptionalism and the disdain of the Other.
this isn't a phenomenon that is exclusive to working class people, even wealthy americans or americans traveling abroad won't know a lick of another language. not sure why the comparison to europe. again, i'm not comparing America to other NATO or OECD countries, i'm comparing it globally.
i do agree this is petty and i'm not sure why a lot of people are treating this as some sort of personal slight when it is not. i'm not moralizing being monolingual, i just disagree with the view that american monolingualism is only due to economic factors and somehow neatly separated and insulated from american culture, which people on this site have no trouble critiquing and poking fun at, for instance.
This seems like the weirdest thing to dunk on Americans for. Like, yeah, Americans can't read things in a language they're not fluent in, and... neither can anyone else?
People should at least know some basic vocabulary and conversational sentences. That should get you by for nuanced and often deeply contextual political analysis from 100 years ago, right?
Why? Basic skills would absolutely not get you through an old French text from 100 years ago. There'd be so many archaic forms of words to bog you down. Translations exist these days. Learning a language is absolutely not paramount for learning revolutionary skills.
EDIT: i think you may have been being sarcastic but I'm leaving it anyway
Yeah, that's my point. The meme is criticizing americans for needing theory to be translated into english. Which seems to be adjacent to some valid criticisms, but dosen't make sense as is.
I'll admit I was making fun of the meme for using vague, unfocused sarcasm against its target, and I did it by using slightly more pointed sarcasm, so it's fair you misunderstood me.
This is only useful if you are likely to run into people that speak another language. Without that you just lose any fluency or phrases even ignoring their lack of utility at that point.
Be me, be socially uncomfortable, learning tourist German while in Germany, panics every time I tried to talk to a German and only high school Spanish would come out.
What do you call someone who can understand two languages?
spoiler
A bilingual
What do you call someone who can understand one language?
spoiler
An anglophone
:stalin-point: amerikan
how many languages do you speak?
3, which is 3.8 times the amount of languages the average American speaks :tito-laugh:
Yes the meme is silly, but also :farquaad-point: American
Good for you, but sneering at the masses of American people for shit that's out of their control is :LIB: bullshit
edit: not to mention the blatant erasure of millions of working Americans who actually are multi-lingual, particularly in English and Spanish.
Yes, but you're funny people
A McDonald's flying their M flag half mast because of a mass shooting close by? Accidental absurdist comedy. I'm not laughing at classist "fly-over states" jokes, I am laughing at this shit
I hate America but that has nothing to do with laughing at poor people for not being taught languages in their crumbling education system.
that's absolutely not what either you or the meme were making fun of
OK, restating
:tito-laugh: lmao those able-bodied neurotypical cisgender heterosexual upper middle class white suburban American nuclear families who, due to immediate material conditions created from two centuries of lingual-cultural oppression, have only been taught a single language, inadequately, thanks to their deteriorating educational system caused by racist tax systems which crumble under global economic duress.
In the rest of the world, do the majority of people who speak multiple languages learn them from formal classes? Because that’s not how it is here
Implies "and were not born into multilingual families who were forced onto these circumstances due to capital's debilitating force", but maybe I wasn't giving enough details, so my bad if it was unclear.
I’m not really trying to pile onto whatever back and forth you’re having. This is just where I happened to ask the question. It’s confusing me that the reason people are acting like we don’t speak more languages is that we don’t have good enough formal education. I thought it was because we have significantly less linguistic diversity because of all the genocide and colonial culture. Like I need to drive for over 24 hours straight before I’m in an area where the majority of people don’t speak English as their first language. And even in the county I grew up in where like a third of people speak Spanish, our towns and schools are still so segregated that I spent the first 15 years of my life having spoken to an ESL person.
Oh I thought you were adding onto the bit or w/e.
I think this misconception stems from west-EU people focusing on white middle class people and seeing language as a "fun skill" to pick up on in highschool, not understanding the class based historical intricacies to it as you described.
I think that is the most common or at least the most visible experience, yes. There are school districts here where the policy is that if a child doesn’t speak English, they are not to speak another language in the classroom, other students are not allowed to translate, and the tests and assignments they receive must be in English. But these kids, again, tend to be segregated out of nearly-all-white schools and just end up as the quiet kid in the back and no one bothers asking why they “refuse to participate”.
deleted by creator
The most effective means of learning a language is immersion. You can supplement with other techniques to speed up, but without it it’s pretty much impossible to reach fluency. It’s how every human being forever has learned their first language. See o it would make sense that the #1 predictor of speaking multiple languages is just the number of languages spoken around you
As much as I’d love to, I cannot take credit for Trump’s hilarity. The McDonald’s flag was me though. That was a fun bit
i'm sorry, but a lot (most tbh) people who speak multiple languages live in worse conditions than the average american. the main reason americans are monolingual is cultural, not due to their own immediate material conditions.
The nearest city where English is not the majority language by a large margin is about 600 miles away from me, or about the distance between Paris and Vienna. My immediate material condition is that since I can't afford to travel, I don't do international business, and I will likely never be in a city that isn't majority English speaking for the rest of my life, there is no pressing material need to learn any other languages. Many if not most Americans are in the same position; The international lingua franca is their native language, they cannot afford to travel to places where other languages are spoken, and unless they live in the Southwest they will probably not interact with populations that speak another language for most of their lives.
i think the lingua franca argument is pretty strong. i was gonna add it to my initial comment but i had some stuff to do and opted not to. americans still have a reputation of only knowing English even when compared to other anglophone countries though. i know Europeans make fun of the English for the exact same reason, but i feel like on a global level America is still the worst when it comes to this.
and i feel like in your comment it also shows how it's a bit cultural, you only pointed out utilitarian reasons for learning a language, which is a bit like pointing out utilitarian reasons for looking at art.
please don't take this personally because i don't mean to be rude to americans personally, it's just an observation and a critique of the idea that America is somehow an uniquely awful country for the working class.
I'm not saying America is good or bad for the working class, just that there are very immediate material reasons why learning a second language is not only of low utility value, but also very difficult because there are few opportunities to organically use that language in your day to day life.
So your logic here is that the more poor you are, the more languages you automatically speak?
that isn't really a charitable interpretation of what i said lol
what i meant to convey is that trying to explain the fact that americans don't speak other languages solely with the fact that they don't have the means to doesn't really stick when it's objectively one of the better countries in the world to live in, despite how god awful it still is. it's not like the rest of the world live more comfortable lives.
Look, there are two material reasons why Americans don't often learn other languages. The first is that they usually don't need to: English is the most widely spoken language in the world. People from poorer countries might have to have more than one language for one reason or another just to get by.
The second goes to what you're saying about comfortable lives: yes, Americans are more comfortable in many ways than most other people. But they don't enjoy the kind of social-democratic benefits that Europeans typically enjoy, which means they often don't have the time to learn other skills or travel internationally like Europeans do. It's hard to find the time to learn a language or experience another culture when your government doesn't mandate paid leave.
Anyway, this shit is so petty. I just don't understand why self-described communists would ever make fun of millions of people for a lack of education in a foreign language. That's the kind of shit liberals do.
i'm not making fun of Americans for not speaking another language. i'm at most critiquing and poking fun at american culture. speaking other languages isn't just knowledge, it's a door for a deeper understanding of other cultures and peoples. americans being monolingual is also a reflection of american exceptionalism and the disdain of the Other.
this isn't a phenomenon that is exclusive to working class people, even wealthy americans or americans traveling abroad won't know a lick of another language. not sure why the comparison to europe. again, i'm not comparing America to other NATO or OECD countries, i'm comparing it globally.
i do agree this is petty and i'm not sure why a lot of people are treating this as some sort of personal slight when it is not. i'm not moralizing being monolingual, i just disagree with the view that american monolingualism is only due to economic factors and somehow neatly separated and insulated from american culture, which people on this site have no trouble critiquing and poking fun at, for instance.