Many indians speak 4+ languages easily , and we dont even notice that 😅
Last I checked.
Fun fact: when you say “Asian” to an American, their first thought is East or Southeast Asia, but a British person’s primary association with “Asianness”, for lack of a better term, is India and Pakistan.
Geographically it is a subcontinent that slammed into Asia to form the Himalayas, so you could make the argument it is its own thing.
That’s like arguing nothing is its own thing cause they used to be one continent.
How well do you speak those languages? For example, can you order pizza with pineapple and olives in any of those languages? What if the pizza you get is cold, there’s only one olive on it and the crust is soggy, could you get your complaints through in any language?
Or perhaps will the explanation be more like: “Pizza bad, no good. Want money back.”
Well most of us speak a mother tongue , and english ( since ex britt colony ) very fluently , but there are times when both parents speak a different language and the city /state you live in has a different language and hence they speak it very close to native fluency !
I’m not from India but as another Asian, yes, we can have fluent conversations in several languages. (I grew up speaking English, Mandarin, Malay, Cantonese and a bit of Hakka)
That’s pretty cool. Took a quick look at the relationships those languages have, and it seems that Malay is the odd one out, all the others are in the sinitic family. I would expect that if you learn one, your mind isn’t going to explode if you try to learn the other two. However, Malay is completely different, so jumping into that world may require some extra effort.
To give a European example, if you already know Norwegian, learning Swedish it’s only one step away. Jumping into Danish or German at that point can be done, but it will require some extra effort. A similar situation exists between Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
Not to take away from this but often these 4 are very similar languages that could be easily interpreted as dialects if not the identity politics.
It is complicated. India has at least four language families - Indo-European, Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan. So Hindi (I-E) is closer related to English or Greek than to Tamil (Dra), Santali (AA) or Zeme (S-T). While it is rare for people to speak languages belonging to all four families, I know at least three people who can passably speak six languages from two or three families.
What exactly is wrong with simplified? The only beef I have with it is it makes it harder for me to transfer my Japanese Kanji to Hanzi.
面白いね。メキシコがアメリカの近くにあるのに、アメリカの大分がスペイン語を全然はなせないねｗ！私もスペイン語が習いたいけど、日本語もうＰａｉｎｉｎｔｈｅａｓｓだよ！
There are few reasons to visit Mexico for most Americans, even those on the border. If you don’t understand that, then you’re ignorant of how things typically work here. I live there (in a border city), feel free to ask me questions.
This said, I agree that japanese is a pain in the ass to learn. Still, I’m really enjoying the process of it. I’m done with Hiragana, and I’m learning Katakana now. So, I’m a the level of a child, basically… But that’s okay. We all have to start somewhere, and judging strangers is kind of considered an asshole move here in America.
Good luck with your learnings.
I assume in terms of incentive, there are more reason for Spanish speakers to learn English than English speakers to learn Spanish. Likewise most Spanish speakers within the US tend to keep to their own communities, and you’re unlikely to directly interact with them unless you are friends with people in the group, or frequently do business with people who speak Spanish.
It’s kinda like Russian and its bordering Countries. Many people in Kazakhstan can speak Russian, but not many Russians can speak Kazakh.
And good luck with your language endeavors as well. Japanese does get easier the more you interact with it. I am at the top of my game when I’m watching and reading media constantly.
That’s exactly correct. I can be in Mexico in a half an hour or less if I hopped in my car right now. Despite this, I haven’t heard anyone speak Spanish in literally years. There’s some communities here that will denegrate folks for not speaking English, although that’s thankfully not very common in my city.
Still, despite my cities approval and acceptance of immigrants, there’s been a cultural expectation for over a century for immigrants to assimilate here, rather than mix. This leads to English, the most convenient language for us to learn, often being the only one we learn. It also means bilingual immigrants are often pushed to abandon further study in their original language in order to fully embrace and improve their English.
The fact English is the most popular language on the planet, and the one used most often in international business, gives further incentive to master it over starting or continuing a different language. As the poorly constructed meme above sloppily showcases, most people (forget only targeting Americans) don’t master this language. I can only imagine it’s not the easiest one out there to learn.
Japanese is a lot of fun so far! I love anime, and I look forward to someday watching without subs or dubs. It only took a few weeks to learn the Hiragana, but the Kanji are likely to humble me greatly.
Americans have trouble with any accent that isn’t the blandest, nails on chalkboard accent.
Once had one ask me if I was speaking English when I spoke to him (for context I am Irish, the north bit)
Bland and nails on chalkboard? That’s like the opposite of bland. Not great, but definitely not bland. Bland is blunt and flat. Nails on chalkboard is shrill, sharp, and grating. I just don’t understand how you can believe both at the same time.
Here, I mean more the reaction to it, I sometimes cringe at the pronunciation or intonation in the way one would to nails on a chalkboard (the idiom can have more than one meaning or reaction attached to it)
That doesn’t change the argument. Bland and cringe are also not like each other. I’m all for you criticizing something because it’s different than you, but at least use your language consistently and properly. How would anyone interpret a secondary analogy without knowing how you personally react? It already has a clear meaning on its surface. Occam’s razor would indicate that’s enough. Why would anyone invent a second possible scenario that’s only knowable if you have access to information that isn’t well known, and in this case, near certainty of being unknown? Just say hearing the accent from some other country makes you cringe. Communication doesn’t have to be difficult unless you make it so.
Well fucksake mate, when someone asks yous where you’re from, yous go “NornIrn”
Naecunt can unnerstaund thon
Right so don’t really know if this is bait… but that’s one kind of accent (and the tickest pronunciation at that) in ulster, specifically greater Belfast/co. Antrim and very few people speak that thick. For the most part they should be quite understandable from the perspective of anyone who consumes any English language media outside of only American or only London (RP) English. The number of times I have had people have trouble with my accent in Europe and then I ask them what they watched when learning English and the answer is American TV is astounding.
This is me getting on my wee podium now but I have a huge problem with the Americans and Brits for this, they marginalise the fuck out if our dialect, make fun of it for being unitelligible (after making no effort to understand it), and often deny it any legitimacy.
In reality Irish English is spoken by 5-7million people, as large as some dialects of European languages (eg. Austrian/swiss German, Belgian/Swiss French, etc) and if you learn French or German you still get some exposure to those dialects and if you out your mind to it understand it.
I have a huge problem with the Americans and Brits for this, they marginalise the fuck out if our dialect, make fun of it for being unitelligible
I mean I know you’re talking about the wider world and not just this thread, but you started the conversation by being disingenuous about Americans and their dialects. It’s kind of hard for people to take “I have a legitimate dialect” seriously when you just got done trashing half a continent’s worth of dialects
Maybe if we all broach the topic with a little more understanding, you and everyone will feel better about it. For example Appalachian English and Northern Ireland English are both dialects with their own rules of pronunciation and grammar. They’re both legitimate. But it’s not surprising they’d have trouble understanding each other because they have so little interaction. But with patience and mutual respect it can happen
My god son, just how many marbles were you trying to eat while talking to those nice Americans? You do know that the untied states has around 30 dialects, and every accent from around the world, right? I’m sure you knew better than that when you generalized 300 million people into one anecdote.
Az angol nyelv a magyar nyelvhez képest semmi.
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