In our defense, most of us can't even speak English.

Depends where you are in the country or how wealthy you are, on whether learning a foreign language is a meaningful thing to do. People who live towards the middle and up north can easily go their entire lives without knowing another language. People who live towards the southern border could get a lot out of knowing Spanish. Towards either coast and knowing another language maybe useful. It’s a massive country that primarily speaks English, so it shouldn’t be a shocker to see that many wouldn’t need to learn a second language. I, myself barely know part of another language. And part of that is, it just isn’t really useful to me since almost no one here speaks another language.

Lean

Oh, the irony.

Bit oblivious, more like.

What value does a foreign language have for Bob, who lives in the middle of the country?

I learned two languages in school, have never used either one with a native speaker of that language.

It's a shame there isn't more language education in the US. We had one class on a foreign language starting in sixth grade, which is pretty late.

Most things here are mono lingual. I visited Montreal and I feel like if I was there for a few months, my rudimentary French would really develop. Unfortunately, the one time I tried to speak to someone there who didn't speak English, it didn't go super well. She was patient, but we weren't really understanding each other. All my French is reading and writing, so I have an incredibly bad accent.

Hard to learn a language when there's nobody fluent to talk to in that language

Whoever made this needs to LEAN the language they're using first.

Given that this completely ignores that there are thousands of people who can speak English and their native tribal language I’d say it’s both harsh and ignorant, putting aside that a foreign language was a required class in my high school.

Oh the irony...

If we are throwing shade at American education, I like to start with statistics and basic logical fallacies.

Part of being powerful is a reduction in cognitive load. You don't have to worry about what those strange foreign language speakers think or want because you have the guns and money. They have to worry about what you want. Being asked to learn another land's language places them equal or higher in the hierarchy.

You just can't allow that kind of thinking. I mean, what next, calling foreigners human? /s

I’ve never had use for one.

But I did spend some time learning German and was able to hold conversations to an extent. Was interesting and fun and made some friends (they wanted me to stop trying so hard and just speak English lol).

T R I G G E R E D

USA you mean. (America covers Canada and Mexico and Brazil and... Well you get the picture).

As with anything in the US it's more complex than that. Most of my friends speak a second language to some degree. German, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and I myself am working on Welsh.

Sure you get plenty of ignorant folk who call it useless, like most of my relatives, but plenty want to learn. US is not really one homogenous culture despite how it might seem at times.

¿Qué?

Harsh but well deserved hahaha

I'm currently trying to learn Spanish and my goodness gracious. It would have been easier as a child!

Not really.

I'm a citizen of the United States.

I speak 4, besides American English, at various levels of proficiency, but I'm an American-born son of immigrants who splits time between the US and EU (my wife is Dutch). I also enjoy linguistics and etymology.

Even though this is anecdotal, every daughter and son of an immigrant diaspora that I personally know, like me in the US, speaks multiple or at least 2 languages.

I argue this meme refers to an issue largely for Americans of European descent. Since a very young age, I noticed "white" people in America seem to be scared of "new" or "foreign" things. One of them is learning a language, trying to speak it in public with a native-speaker, and getting corrected for mistakes which will happen, including self-styled "leftists" and "liberals" (the American definition).

I categorize this specific phenomenon, this fear of embarrassment, as another facet or aspect of what some of my black colleagues back in the States refer to as "white fragility".

Those people who look down on "Americans" should talk to more of us who aren't of European descent. Perhaps, that may give some depth to your perception of us, or of what our capacity for a global perspective and living as part of a global community is.

Isn't the girl from Québec in the movie? They go get her from a university in Montreal, if I remember correctly...

The short story by Ted Chiang is really sad

I grew up in California, and moved to New Mexico. I should have taken Spanish in high school, instead of French.

Most people who speak more than one language also speak English, so I don't really NEED to learn another language. Also, I don't talk to people much.

That meme: "You speak English because it's the only language you know. I speak English because it's the only language you know. We are not the same."

Well, okay, thanks.

Next they lern to spel