Hi murican fellas!

Top | Newest First | Oldest First

DunningKruger · 61-69, M

Lots of Europeans are bilingual because Europe consists of all of these small cultural groups and nations, so it's a matter of practicality to learn multiple languages.

The same is somewhat true of Asia; although a single country, there are over 300 languages spoken in China, then there are the other East Asian nations in Southeast Asia and other regions.

In contrast, the continental United States is much more monocultural, and there have long been efforts to encourage or even require immigrants to speak English. You can travel a region comparable in size to Europe and rarely or even never encounter a community for which English is not the primary language. The exception is in the Southwest and Florida, where Spanish is commonly spoken, and were you find a fair number of bilingual Americans.

Yes, there are a lot of Americans who do not talk English goodly. There are a lot of reasons for that. I imagine there are plenty of folks in the UK whose English isn't any better, French-speakers in France who are not masters of the language and so on.

I think it would benefit our nation a great deal if more Americans studied other languages in addition to becoming more fluent in their own native language, but I don't see that happening any time soon.