I think it can be hard to understand, especially for people from Europe or well, anywhere but maybe Australia how crazy Americans are about language.
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I think it can be hard to understand, especially for people from Europe or well, anywhere but maybe Australia how crazy Americans are about language.
Despite being a multicultural country with people from all over the world many Americans are linguistically isolated by history, by geography and by hard-headedness.
It is hard to learn a second language as an English speaker in the US, even if you live in a city like New York and this puts us at a global disadvantage.
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I think it can be hard to understand, especially for people from Europe or well, anywhere but maybe Australia how crazy Americans are about language.
Despite being a multicultural country with people from all over the world many Americans are linguistically isolated by history, by geography and by hard-headedness.
It is hard to learn a second language as an English speaker in the US, even if you live in a city like New York and this puts us at a global disadvantage.
Speaking multiple languages is a kind of power. It makes you objectively more powerful. It's an advantage in negotiations, so how you have it become a liability for a US politician to be "caught" being bilingual in some contexts is wild to me.
Why don't we insist that our schools graduate multilingual students? Just to protect the egos of adults who have never learned?
Anyway there is some noise about this in what passes for US politics at the moment.
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I think it can be hard to understand, especially for people from Europe or well, anywhere but maybe Australia how crazy Americans are about language.
Despite being a multicultural country with people from all over the world many Americans are linguistically isolated by history, by geography and by hard-headedness.
It is hard to learn a second language as an English speaker in the US, even if you live in a city like New York and this puts us at a global disadvantage.
@futurebird I'm so sad I didn't pick up another language as a young person. This is a really unfortunate part of our culture. I've been casually learning Spanish for a few years now and it is a joy. Instead of being worried about the jerbs I'm more concerned about welcoming my neighbors and understanding their cultures better. I'd also love to know mandarin but that's a whole other beast. I need to figure out the next step in my Spanish adventure first.
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@futurebird I'm so sad I didn't pick up another language as a young person. This is a really unfortunate part of our culture. I've been casually learning Spanish for a few years now and it is a joy. Instead of being worried about the jerbs I'm more concerned about welcoming my neighbors and understanding their cultures better. I'd also love to know mandarin but that's a whole other beast. I need to figure out the next step in my Spanish adventure first.
My husband has studied Chinese for a decade and is now good enough to be "almost illiterate in Chinese" as opposed to knowing absolutely nothing about it.
It shocks people though when he breaks it out: most recently to help some elderly lost tourists who were with us. They wanted to keep him I think. It was concerning.
And I find it very cool and sexy that he does this.
