this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
1121 points (97.9% liked)
RPGMemes
10308 readers
324 users here now
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I know it's a joke about Americans not speaking a second language, but they aren't too bad at it. They land at about 23% and seeing how the EU average is 25% that's rather good. https://www.americathebilingual.com/the-surprising-truth-about-american-bilingualism-what-the-data-tells-us/
That site is so weird. And whoever wrote that article is also mathematically illiterate. Not to mention they didn't link to any sources. So here is one they claim to have used:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Foreign_language_skills_statistics#Level_of_command_of_best_known_foreign_language
This source says that 65% of 25-64 year old spoke at least a second language in 2016. The much lower number of 24% is when asked about proficiency, which can't be compared with the US given Americans' notorious overestimation of their own qualifications.
Most of the 25% of Americans (I couldn't find a source for this) claiming to speak a second language is immigrants. I guess it needs to be said, but when people comment on the monolongualism of Americans, it's about those who are not immigrants or first generation born in the US.
In my experience, most non Hispanics claiming to speak Spanish in the US struggle to hold even a basic conversation. And I have been to 35+ states, including door to door canvassing, etc.
It’s worth noting that the lack of second language proficiency isn’t a result of laziness or ignorance
In Europe, most people are a short train ride from another country. There is also a lot of cultural exchange between countries within Europe.
Most Americans are multiple days of driving from the nearest non English speaking country, and that’s just to arrive in an area of Mexico where the people they will interact with overwhelmingly speak English.
In that context, there is little utility for most people in learning a second language. It’s also very difficult to achieve true proficiency when you are so rarely exposed to native speakers of a language.
Also it dosent help that english is the new lingua franca. Those 60% europans usualy speak their own native language and english, sometimes also a second europan language ( In poland for example we learn english and than depending on the school usualy either german or french )