I disagree with this and its my experience that there are assholes speaking every language and that the English speaking world tends to be the most understanding when it comes to second language speakers using improper words and/or grammar.
Personally, and anecdotally, I’ve found English speakers to be quite forgiving of poor English — that is, they usually make an effort to try and understand someone with broken English, and they don’t usually point out poor grammar (though, that could be because the majority of English speakers don’t have the best grammar to begin with 😉). Especially when one compares them with some other cultures, eg the French.
I’m an American who speaks decent German. I’ve gotten this flak traveling in non-German speaking Europe - Stupid American only speaking English attitude thrown my way. Mother fucker I’m in France, a German would also be using English here. To some people the only way to not be “that American” is to speak all the languages.
On the flip side, I’ve had a few Germans ask me why I bothered learning their language when I could just use English.
Moin Brudi, finde ich ziemlich nett von dir das du dir unsere Sprache antust.
…“doesn’t speak perfect English”
Yours sincerely, the English.
Hi it’s me, the English
It’s pretty hard to learn another language as an American unless you’re able to travel to a place where that is used. I wasn’t even allowed to take a foreign language class when I was in high school because I scored too poorly on English in grade school (from not doing homework, not because of aptitude). I haven’t really had a need for it in my adult life either other than like 3 times where I had Spanish speaking customers when I worked at in retail and we still managed to overcome the language barrier.
I don’t get the downvotes here. Learning a language is not easy without immersion. Yes you can bang through literature and even multiple courses… but without frequent use our brains simply lose the connection. Neurons that fire together wire together. This goes doubly for speech.
Many Americans (most?) are taught a second language in school but the lack of places to use it sees this education go to waste. The US is a large country with pockets of ethnic groups throughout - but as far as immersion with another language goes… it is sorely lacking.
It’s unfortunate but a reality.
without frequent use our brains simply lose the connection
I just want to say that I’ve been learning an Asian language for over a decade and have retained almost all of it from infrequent immersion. I don’t know how or why, but it sticks!
What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t feel discouraged because you think it’s meaningless if you’re not jumping in with both feet every day. Rather, you’re still making some progress even when dipping your toes in occasionally. Trust the process!
This isn’t true of anyone I’ve ever known, and i believe it isn’t true for the majority of Americans. I believe it’s a loudly vocal minority who get angry at people speaking other languages or barely speaking English
This is truer than you might expect. Just not as blatant as the meme. Especially in a work context, people will underestimate someone’s abilities, be inpatient with clarifications or simply favour others for tasks.
It’s unconcious with some people, they don’t even know they’re doing it.
I am a first language English speaker, but my partner isn’t and it’s really opened my eyes to how much we underestimate the language difficulties immigrants can have.
Not to say everyone is struggling, but just that I think English speakers do take language skills for granted. And unconsciously are biased towards people based on their preserved language skills.
Even once you’re fluent, like my partner well and truly is, it’s still hard.
well, I think enough people from Latin America have immigrated that they have now skewed that metric… I read somewhere that, basically any other country with such a large population of bilingual individuals, declared the second language official
That’ll never happen in Murica of course
That is because the US does not have an official language at the federal level. Some states do though, and some only English is the official language but some do recognize Spanish and native American languages as official languages. Of course it would be nice to have a more formal approach but I was very surprised of how much stuff is written in more than one language and for Spanish in specific I think you have a very high chance of finding some employee that speaks it or they try to translate. At least in the couple of places that I have being which I admit is a small sample size
Good to know, thanks for the info
