• KernelAddict@lemmy.ca
    ·
    1 year ago

    A lot of Americans in the south appear to speak Spanish from what I've noticed while traveling there.

    • youngalfred@lemm.ee
      ·
      1 year ago

      I always thought it was a bit harder in Australia, given that the language changes so much across such small distances.

      • jimmux@programming.dev
        ·
        1 year ago

        So much of it has been lost too. We could do better, though. Teaching what we can would at least teach the general skill of learning languages.

        Indonesian is an underrepresented option in my opinion. They're neighbours and the language is relatively easy. Couldn't hurt to improve relations a bit. Might make a better impression during the customary pilgrimage to Bali.

      • Qualanqui@lemmy.nz
        ·
        1 year ago

        Same with Te Reo in NZ, it's kind of standardized now but when I was a kid living in the BoP I learnt a lot of Maori but when we moved to the south island the dialect was quite different so I lost a lot through atrophy.

      • zik@aussie.zone
        ·
        1 year ago

        There are something like 50 different indigenous languages across Australia. That makes it pretty hard to standardise one.

    • Bob@feddit.nl
      ·
      1 year ago

      There's a computer game called Umurangi Generation, which is like Tony Hawk's but you take photos instead of skateboard, and you can set the language to Maori.

  • Nath@aussie.zone
    ·
    1 year ago

    You might be surprised. Half of us were either born overseas or had at least one parent born overseas. A little under a third of us have English as our second language. That doesn't mean that two thirds of us only speak English - only that English is our 'home' language.

    I know there's a lot of multiculuralism in the USA also, but I don't know whether those percentages compare.

    Source: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/media%20release3