this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
1789 points (98.8% liked)
Memes
45680 readers
1304 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
*white Americans maybe. There is a massive amount of the US that English is their second language... But not speaking a second language is really a problem many places.
Also black Americans. All in all, only 20% of Americans in general, only about 4% of white Americans and 7% of black Americans are bilingual. Compare this to 84% of Germans for example, a far less diverse country, where 38% speak two languages, 29% three languages, 17% even more than three.
Also, there probably are people earning a living wage doing freelancing in the US. It's a joke, a two-liner at that. Of course it's an oversimplification.
And of course Europe has so many bilingual people because they live so close to other cultures speaking other languages. If every region in the US spoke a different language things would be different obviously
That's one reason for sure, especially in border regions. The other one is that for basically any high paying job being fluent in English is a requirement as most companies operate internationally. You can have a very successful career speaking only one language, but nowadays only if that language happens to be English.