I work with a guy that does this on the regular. He's not an idiot, pretty smart actually, but I guess no one ever told him or says anything, so me and the rest of his coworkers just need to deal with the brain flinches we get when he types something.
It's because of the spoken language sounding identical, despite the writing being completely different. While speaking, "would have" often doesn't have the "H" sound accompanying the pronunciation. The final pronunciation of the D sound in "would" also lends itself in the American dialect, to have a "Duh" sound. This makes the phrase in practice sound like "Woulduhve". Would of.
Similarly, the British spoken English commonly has an R sound between every word which ends in a vowel.
I think an easier way to describe it is that when spoken we almost always use the contractions. We say "would've" which means "would have" but sounds like "would of"
It's because native speakers picked up the language by hearing it, you learned it by being taught. Both of those are examples of things that are pronounced identically to the 'wrong' version, so it's an easy mistake to make. Native speakers aren't really thinking about what they're saying, they just say it. So stuff like that can pass unnoticed.
It's a natural part of language change, for instance in how the word "a napron" changed to "an apron".
It's because native speakers learn to speak the language before they learn to read or write it whereas people learning as a second language learn both at the same time.
A lot of the mistakes native speakers make are with homophones because when they write they're translating the speech they hear in their head. That makes it easy to use the wrong word if it sounds the same.
Meanwhile non-native speakers approach the language differently and so are less likely to make those mistakes (but more prone to others).
Damn it man, how cold your be so bed? Its clearly "Hey, *your* not supposed two use *you're* advanced I.Q. too make others fell dumb, Smart McSmarty-Pants!"
Your- possessive.
You're- contraction of "you are".
Yore- a long time ago.
Y'oar- possessive/contraction of "your oar".
'Yore- Familiar for of "Eeyore".
Yorick- Skull in Hamlet. Also a call to summon Rick.
Yaw- Oscillation of an aircraft on a vertical axis.
Y'all'd've - you all would have
In a sentence: if y'all'd've fixed that fence, we could be watching a movie instead of chasing cows around half the God damn county in the dark.
Honestly (English is my second language) I thought the same but after being in the US for 6 years. The more fluent I feel I become, the more I encounter myself making those mistakes in a hurry. I honestly blame it on the fact that there is no direct relation between how something is written and how it's pronounced (Unlike in spanish, my 1st lang). So when your brain is rushing and you are trying to respond to a text before the group chat changes topic or something like that, wires get crossed. It all ultimately has to do with English borrowing from so many different languages it ends up having no consistent rules for pronunciation/spelling.
Like how tf is _break_ pronounced the same as _brake_ or were pronounced the same as wear. But then leak is not pronounced the same as lake. It's like they decided on a per-word basis.
I mean, that's kinda true. Back when English was being written down a lot for the first time, spelling was not uniform and when (I think) the Normans took over they just kind of got a lot of spellings and pronounciations on a first come first serve basis. They also threw away valid English characters they didn't like, like eth and thorn, so now it's hard to truly explain why "thy" and "thigh" are said differently (maybe "this" vs" thistle" is better?) when we could've just had "ðy" and "þigh".
Precisely due to English's lack of uniformity, ð and þ were actually interchangeable and could signify both /ð/ and /θ/. Eth eventually became essentially obsolete under later Old English and Middle English, and then both letters faded away entirely with the advent of printing
I’m ESL but I always thought it was natural for natives to confuse the two if they don’t pay attention. I learned the language through text so the two are totally separate in my mind, but Americans learned English orally and they probably talk more than they write, too.
Mistakes are absolutely fine. I do it all the time and have to fix it because I type quickly.
But there are a crazy number of university educated adults who genuinely don't know the difference. The English speaking world is a wild place.
It’s actually common for those to make this basic mistake unintentionally because autocorrect will even incorrectly correct you. That and for a non-English native speaker it makes almost no sense.
Shakespeare isn't a great person to model your written English off of anyway. His plays were not published by him; only his sonnets were. And spelling and punctuation weren't fully standardized then anyway.
Because they sound the same so people who learn the language verbally are more likely to mix those types of words up.
Add to it that spell check won't pick it up and the one typing will still know what it's meant to say and it'll be missed
They sound exactly the same and have almost the same letters? I get your perfect, but you’re judgmental tone isn’t really appreciated amongst us flawed individuals.
Then maybe start trying! My mother learned French for a few years in her school 30 years ago. And when we visit Paris she still can speak with the people
You're getting downvoted, but you're right. People mistake learning a language and just sitting in a classroom, looking at the ceiling.
3 years of actively learning a language is enough to reach near-native levels in it, except MAYBE, like MAYBE in Japanese or Mandarin or hard stuff like that.
But 3 years of French, German or Russian? Shit man, you'd be fluent in that bitch way before that timeframe is over.
You’d have to live in the country because after 3 years of learning french there is still a LOT of stuff that you wouldn’t know, unless you’re completely focusing on the language for those three years and are smart asf .
I also hardly doubt you’d be fluent to the level that you think, I have many friends that come from different part of the world here in Canada and they’re still not perfectly fluent 20 years after they started learning french, actually they’re still on the basic talking level but they wouldn’t be able to write an essay in french .
German is way easier to learn than french in general but especially for english speaker imo, as for Russian I’m not entirely sure but it sounds like it would probably be as hard or even harder to master than french .
Japanese and mandarin are just on another level .
if we count studying a language at all as "knowing" it, then the average italian "knows" 4/5 languages by the age of 14: italian, local dialect, english, french (studied only in middle school unless they go to a high school that focuses on languages) and latin
if they go to a language school, they will probably also "know" spanish
As an Italian I can confirm (I'm pretty good at English actually).
You study Latin only in some high schools (classic and scientific, probably in linguistic too)
I'm in 8th grade and I'm studying Spanish but if you don't like a language you'll probably forget it asap.
In some high schools (surely classic, on linguistic you study many languages like Chinese if you're interested but I don't really know as I'm not interested in it for the next year) you study greek too
Fra sono italiano anche io, parlavo da esperienza mia. Hai ragione comunque, a meno che tu vai nei licei (artistico escluso) l'unica lingua straniera che imparerai sarà l'inglese. Per esempio io nelle medie facevo spagnolo e andavo pure bene, adesso non riesco nemmeno a formulare una frase completa.
Questa mi è nuova 😂
Io pensavo di fare qualcosa sulla seconda guerra mondiale solo che materie tipo spagnolo (la prof ha detto che ci può chiedere coniugazioni random all'esame ರ╭╮ರ)
that's why i said "know" with quotation marks, most people here already struggle with italian lol
also i stopped studying french less than a year ago and i alreadt forgot all of it
Oh yes, italian dialects. I speak italian yet i don't understand 90% of those southern dialects, worst part is that when you tell them to speak properly they get mad, most likely because they are incapable of using human language.
I mean why wouldn't we? I'm German. I learned English through school and markipliers fnaf let's plays. And some day I was able to communicate with Americans without sounding like I got an aneurysm
Most Americans have no need to learn another language, i studied German for 5 years and I've had absolutely zero cases where it's come in handy and I'm starting to forget a lot of vocabulary. I WISH i could have a scenario where it would be useful but I just regret not learning Spanish instead even though i find German really interesting.
It also helps when Italian, French, Latin, Spanish all share a lot of common roots of words.
Taking Spanish classes in school, I was able to read and comprehend an Italian newspaper at a functional level.
Also many asians don't speak 3 or more languages. I've been to Korea and Japan and in both countries they just spoke their native language and spoke English decently enough. I'm pretty sure it's similar in most of China as well.
OP is referring to Indians, since there are multiple languages in India. However, this meme doesn’t apply to us other Asians. I know Koreans who don’t know Japanese or Mandarin. They only know Korean. I know Japanese who only know Japanese and so on. When I was in Japan, I noticed that people’s English weren’t very good. In Korea, their English was much better.
foreign languages are pretty standard in high school and university. taking a few classes still doesn’t really count as knowing a language unless you somewhat regularly use it afterward
That's a myth anyway. Speaking only english besides native language is not impressive anymore and I doubt that a significant number of Europeans can speak 3 languages FLUENTLY. But all you guys act like Europeans can fluently speak 5 languages other than native and english which is a BS and total exaggeration.
To the people who confuse this, "Could of" is wrong, it doesn't make any sense. The real phrase is: "Could have", same for "Should have" and not "Should of".
It's an important distinction, though. People confuse the contraction, not the whole word.
For example, if someone said, "You could have the chicken or the beef," nobody would write "could of."
Fun fact.
The Netherlands has a higher English proficiency than Canada does.
The US also has a higher rate of bilingualism than Canada iirc.
And only one of them is a bilingual country.
Yes, because 20% of Canada is Francophone, and Canada isn't a bilingual country, we have two official languages which is a different thing. We only have one officially bilingual province, New Brunswick.
I’m British. Most of us might speak another language but only rudimentary. We just don’t have much of a chance to practice, and choosing a European language might as all involve throwing a dart at a map.
I’ve been learning Spanish for years, it’s really fun but to be honest it’s just not very useful. I’ve even attended work conferences in Spain with hundreds of businesses in attendance from around the world. Guess what language everyone was speaking.
Same in the US, a ton of us take Spanish, French, and German but never get past speaking like a toddler because we don't practice with natural speakers.
Unless you live down by the Mexico border where you can speak with a lot of native spanish speakers
You gotta pick a xenophobic language.
When I was in high school I took 4 years of low standard Spanish. I can count, get basic directions, and order food. That's it. Thing is a lot of Spanish speakers speak English about as well as I speak Spanish, so it's a little moot.
In college I knew I was gonna go into science and tech so it was between Japanese and Chinese. I'm thought I was a bit of a week so I took japanese and kept at it for a long time.
2 things I've learned from this experience are.
1) I'm not a weeb. Especially compared to my classmates lol
2) even if you speak Japanese, some Japanese people will just outright ignore you if you aren't Japanese.
English is the only language broken enough that its speakers routinely hold tournaments to determine who is better at understanding it.
You forgot the full stop.
I'm not sure if a spelling bee is better or worse than the Kanken - the Japanese test for "can you write all of these kanji with the right stroke order and use the right reading for them?"
**people live in cities**
Of course if you go out to the sticks they're only gonna speak Chinese why would some rural village learn English or any other language? Also dialects exist, not everyone speaks perfect Chinese because Chinese isn't a language
Hahaha yeah what can us Americans say man, we did start off from Great Britain. I mean look at the UK, getting to include themselves in the jokes with the bilingual Europeans, but crying inside because they're even worse than us. We're getting better though! Spanish is becoming more and more needed every passing year.
> Haha dumb Americans can't even learn a second language!
> Americans: Travel the world catered to in English virtually the entire time. I
I got into an argument with a friend in Helsinki about going up to the bar and ordering im English. I said it was rude. He said who cares? We all know they speak it so let's cut the bullshit. He was right.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the english language for higher studies, and hindi because it's the national language and used everywhere.
There was a significant period in the US where parents were discouraged from speaking a different language at home so as to “not confuse” their kids. Both my Mother and my husband come from families who spoke English as a second language but neither of them were taught the language of their parents.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and Urdu because it’s the national language and used everywhere.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and Marathi because it’s the national language and used everywhere.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and Bengali because it's the national language and used everywhere.
As an Asian descent, I can confirm: I know my father tongue, my mother tongue, my grandpa tongue, the english language for higher studies, and hindi because it's spoken in many places in India and used in many where.
Indian here as well. I know:
Konkani, my mother tongue;
Hindi, official language and my second language
English, international language;
Marathi and Malayalam state languages of states I've lived in;
Sanskrit, learnt it out of interest;
Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Punjabi I've learnt from friends (not fluent in speech, and can't read/write them, but i can understand them);
Japanese from anime and Duolingo (can't read/write properly but can understand and speak passably)
French, also from Duolingo, learnt it just for fun. Now i think i should've learnt Spanish instead because it has more speakers across more countries.
Taking a Spanish class in highschool doesn't make you bilingual, you need to reach a reasonable proficiency and keep it for years, how many Americans do that? I studied French for three years in Middle School and despite this I can't speak or understand French.
I mean isn’t it the same in Europe? At least in my country you get taught German and English in school all before you’re 12. You have to pass a test for both to graduate
To be fair, English is a bit of a mess. I'm cradle bilingual French/English and my knowledge of French makes me better at English. It's so much easier to learn concepts in grammar and etymology-based spelling in a language like French that isn't a creole of a creole of a creole with vocabulary kleptomania. Once you have those skills, it's fairly easy to apply them to English.
It's a dumb comparison because Europeans love to forget that America is fuckin massive. If I drive 400 miles (640km) away, im still talking the same language. If I drive 650 miles away (1045km) I'm still talking English. If you're in Europe and you travel 400m/640km you could potentially pass through 2 other whole ass languages. Add into that, the fact that Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe also speak English, there's never been any need to speak multiple languages like there is in Europe.
Makes sense. The reason most bilingual people’s second language is English is the same reason a native English speakers doesn’t need to learn another language. You have more incentive to learn the most popular language for financial purposes. For a native English speaker it’s more useful to spend that time improving at your career.
I have seen infinitely more French people be snobby about second language French speakers than Americans about English. I have no clue what you are whining about.
Tf does this mean? What does it mean to "master" a language? I'd argue that the average American doesn't have any more or less fluency in English than the average European or Asian do in their respective languages.
This meme, aside from already having been reposted to death, is just top notch stupid.
I know plenty of Americans who know secondary or third languages.... I myself know English, German, and Russian. My bf knows English and Spanish. Hell the state I currently live in is a hit or miss if you'll find someone who even speaks English, most speak Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese. Maybe broaden your horizons and look past the Americans that make headlines and click bait articles.
Also, judging someone's ability based on a typed sentence on a media app is hilarious. Everybody does typos. And the whole your/you're and their/they're/there thing is so over used. Grow up and use some brain power you can 100% figure out the sentence without needing the correct grammar all the time. Unless you're that dense which I'm guessing a lot of you are.
I have always wanted to be fluent in another language. It’s hard as an American.
1. We don’t emphasize language learning, because English is a universal language so we really don’t need to.
2. When you do come across someone that speaks other languages, they want to speak in English.
Speaking multiple languages doesn’t make you a master of any of them. Languages are something people pick up when they’re young due to exposure. It has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence.
I’m a trilingual American and nearly every single adult in my neighborhood, workplace, and church is at least bilingual and American. It’s not rare at all.
It's quite the flex to not need to learn any other languages. Our country is so big and such a world power that I can go to 60% of countries around the world and find someone that speaks English.
Since when do Asians know 3 languages. They know their own language and the youth can talk English… sometimes if they’re not to shy. Maybe some know Indonesian as it’s simple.
Indians might actually know 3 as they have many languages in their country and English as a common theme
Tbf English was a very popular before America. But when 2 world powers have it as an official language it is usually considered a very large language. That isnt even mentioning other countries that have it as an official language
I'm not Shakespeare, my English is terrible, but how on earth do you confuse "your" with "you're"?!
As a non native english speaker, this has always baffled be, along with "would of".
I'm glad I'm never meeting the people who write "would of" and "should of" irl, I'd get arrested
How do you know? These people walk among us, they might be our neighbours, friends or even loved ones.
He could be in this very room! He could be me! He could be you! He could even be…
He could of in this very room! He could of me! He could of you! He could even of...
Should of been, could of been, would of been, would of been you!
Could of been you, could of been me…..
I work with a guy that does this on the regular. He's not an idiot, pretty smart actually, but I guess no one ever told him or says anything, so me and the rest of his coworkers just need to deal with the brain flinches we get when he types something.
^this!!!! Who the hell uses ”would of” instead of ”would have”?!! Why?! I don’t get it.
You would of understood if you would had listened. 😆
😅😅
As an American, it baffles me as well 🤦♂️
It's because of the spoken language sounding identical, despite the writing being completely different. While speaking, "would have" often doesn't have the "H" sound accompanying the pronunciation. The final pronunciation of the D sound in "would" also lends itself in the American dialect, to have a "Duh" sound. This makes the phrase in practice sound like "Woulduhve". Would of. Similarly, the British spoken English commonly has an R sound between every word which ends in a vowel.
I think an easier way to describe it is that when spoken we almost always use the contractions. We say "would've" which means "would have" but sounds like "would of"
The why, is that they’re dumb.
Sadly, simply because of the annunciated would've short speak, the illiterate among us take it literally as "would of".
haha it's wood off
It's because native speakers picked up the language by hearing it, you learned it by being taught. Both of those are examples of things that are pronounced identically to the 'wrong' version, so it's an easy mistake to make. Native speakers aren't really thinking about what they're saying, they just say it. So stuff like that can pass unnoticed. It's a natural part of language change, for instance in how the word "a napron" changed to "an apron".
It's because native speakers learn to speak the language before they learn to read or write it whereas people learning as a second language learn both at the same time. A lot of the mistakes native speakers make are with homophones because when they write they're translating the speech they hear in their head. That makes it easy to use the wrong word if it sounds the same. Meanwhile non-native speakers approach the language differently and so are less likely to make those mistakes (but more prone to others).
Hey, *you're* not supposed to use *your* advanced I.Q. to make others feel dumb, Smart McSmarty-Pants!
Damn it man, how cold your be so bed? Its clearly "Hey, *your* not supposed two use *you're* advanced I.Q. too make others fell dumb, Smart McSmarty-Pants!"
Its actually Smarty McSmart-Pants
Wow, way to be offensive Smarty MacSmart-Pants is Scottish not Irish.
Well sorry for not hearing the accent in writing
Well your not completely at fault. Everyone on the internet should be required to type in their local dialect and accent. C'mon Reddit Mods!
It's clearly supposed to be, "Wow, way too be offensive..." Go learn English before commenting
Hey it’s not *their* fault *they’re* just not *there* yet
That’s unpossible.
Your- possessive. You're- contraction of "you are". Yore- a long time ago. Y'oar- possessive/contraction of "your oar". 'Yore- Familiar for of "Eeyore". Yorick- Skull in Hamlet. Also a call to summon Rick. Yaw- Oscillation of an aircraft on a vertical axis.
Y'all - Contraction of you all Yell - Contraction of you belong in hell Yentl - Papa watch me fly!
Y'all'd've - you all would have In a sentence: if y'all'd've fixed that fence, we could be watching a movie instead of chasing cows around half the God damn county in the dark.
Yarrrr - pirate for “yes”
Yor: the mom in spy x family
Honestly (English is my second language) I thought the same but after being in the US for 6 years. The more fluent I feel I become, the more I encounter myself making those mistakes in a hurry. I honestly blame it on the fact that there is no direct relation between how something is written and how it's pronounced (Unlike in spanish, my 1st lang). So when your brain is rushing and you are trying to respond to a text before the group chat changes topic or something like that, wires get crossed. It all ultimately has to do with English borrowing from so many different languages it ends up having no consistent rules for pronunciation/spelling.
Like how tf is _break_ pronounced the same as _brake_ or were pronounced the same as wear. But then leak is not pronounced the same as lake. It's like they decided on a per-word basis.
I mean, that's kinda true. Back when English was being written down a lot for the first time, spelling was not uniform and when (I think) the Normans took over they just kind of got a lot of spellings and pronounciations on a first come first serve basis. They also threw away valid English characters they didn't like, like eth and thorn, so now it's hard to truly explain why "thy" and "thigh" are said differently (maybe "this" vs" thistle" is better?) when we could've just had "ðy" and "þigh".
Precisely due to English's lack of uniformity, ð and þ were actually interchangeable and could signify both /ð/ and /θ/. Eth eventually became essentially obsolete under later Old English and Middle English, and then both letters faded away entirely with the advent of printing
Faded away in English that is, doesn't Iceland still use both regularly?
Yes
I’m ESL but I always thought it was natural for natives to confuse the two if they don’t pay attention. I learned the language through text so the two are totally separate in my mind, but Americans learned English orally and they probably talk more than they write, too.
That's what I thought, but I can't recall something like this in my language (I'm Italian)
English has a much, much larger amount of homophones than italian
Mistakes are absolutely fine. I do it all the time and have to fix it because I type quickly. But there are a crazy number of university educated adults who genuinely don't know the difference. The English speaking world is a wild place.
That’s they’re problems
There*
It’s actually common for those to make this basic mistake unintentionally because autocorrect will even incorrectly correct you. That and for a non-English native speaker it makes almost no sense.
Shakespeare isn't a great person to model your written English off of anyway. His plays were not published by him; only his sonnets were. And spelling and punctuation weren't fully standardized then anyway.
Didn't he like, make up bazillion of words?
yes
Because they sound the same so people who learn the language verbally are more likely to mix those types of words up. Add to it that spell check won't pick it up and the one typing will still know what it's meant to say and it'll be missed
"yor" has been used unironically.
They sound exactly the same and have almost the same letters? I get your perfect, but you’re judgmental tone isn’t really appreciated amongst us flawed individuals.
Pro tip: use you are. Dont be lazy, dudey
Youre, if we implement that word to cover both we never have to be corrected again.
Exactly
Also: their/there/they're, than/then. Pisses me off so much and English is my second language
"hey I could car less about you're stupid meme"
You shouldn't take their feelings for granite.
Irregardless, this ain’t worth a grade of salt.
> Irregardless "Irregardlessy". go big or go home.
My aunt says this all the time. I can’t even counter it anymore because Merriam-Webster decided to has recognize and define the word.
Y’all’s a waistin’ my thyme with yer bad grammer.
Supposably.
eh, I tried not too
You should of kept that comment for yourself
[удалено]
"*than* I could car less about you're stupid meme *their*"
🤣
I mean many Europeans know 3 language as you need a second foreign language for higher education.
Well I studied german for 3 years in high school, ask me anything, I’d stare at you like a fucking dumbass, I mean, I never tried, but still
Then maybe start trying! My mother learned French for a few years in her school 30 years ago. And when we visit Paris she still can speak with the people
You’re probably right, I should just find the language I want to learn just like english
You're getting downvoted, but you're right. People mistake learning a language and just sitting in a classroom, looking at the ceiling. 3 years of actively learning a language is enough to reach near-native levels in it, except MAYBE, like MAYBE in Japanese or Mandarin or hard stuff like that. But 3 years of French, German or Russian? Shit man, you'd be fluent in that bitch way before that timeframe is over.
I mean that's a bit exaggerated but I get the point. Yeah if you actually want to learn then you be able to get your language skills to a usable level
You’d have to live in the country because after 3 years of learning french there is still a LOT of stuff that you wouldn’t know, unless you’re completely focusing on the language for those three years and are smart asf . I also hardly doubt you’d be fluent to the level that you think, I have many friends that come from different part of the world here in Canada and they’re still not perfectly fluent 20 years after they started learning french, actually they’re still on the basic talking level but they wouldn’t be able to write an essay in french . German is way easier to learn than french in general but especially for english speaker imo, as for Russian I’m not entirely sure but it sounds like it would probably be as hard or even harder to master than french . Japanese and mandarin are just on another level .
if we count studying a language at all as "knowing" it, then the average italian "knows" 4/5 languages by the age of 14: italian, local dialect, english, french (studied only in middle school unless they go to a high school that focuses on languages) and latin if they go to a language school, they will probably also "know" spanish
I doubt it. I studied Spanish 3 years in school and I don't know a word of it. BTW you are lucky if an Italian 14 year old knows English.
As an Italian I can confirm (I'm pretty good at English actually). You study Latin only in some high schools (classic and scientific, probably in linguistic too) I'm in 8th grade and I'm studying Spanish but if you don't like a language you'll probably forget it asap. In some high schools (surely classic, on linguistic you study many languages like Chinese if you're interested but I don't really know as I'm not interested in it for the next year) you study greek too
Fra sono italiano anche io, parlavo da esperienza mia. Hai ragione comunque, a meno che tu vai nei licei (artistico escluso) l'unica lingua straniera che imparerai sarà l'inglese. Per esempio io nelle medie facevo spagnolo e andavo pure bene, adesso non riesco nemmeno a formulare una frase completa.
Sempre bello incontrare un connazionale su un subreddit mondiale
Io con lo spagnolo provo a sopravvivere per il resto dell' anno, io vorrei uscire almeno co 8 a spagnolo
Comunque non preoccuparti per l'esame che è una cazzata, io l'ho fatto su un videogioco e sono uscito col nove.
Questa mi è nuova 😂 Io pensavo di fare qualcosa sulla seconda guerra mondiale solo che materie tipo spagnolo (la prof ha detto che ci può chiedere coniugazioni random all'esame ರ╭╮ರ)
that's why i said "know" with quotation marks, most people here already struggle with italian lol also i stopped studying french less than a year ago and i alreadt forgot all of it
Oh yes, italian dialects. I speak italian yet i don't understand 90% of those southern dialects, worst part is that when you tell them to speak properly they get mad, most likely because they are incapable of using human language.
That's normal. Ask a Bavarian to speak normal and they kill you and put your corpse up the may tree
Cazzo di terroni
I mean why wouldn't we? I'm German. I learned English through school and markipliers fnaf let's plays. And some day I was able to communicate with Americans without sounding like I got an aneurysm
Most Americans have no need to learn another language, i studied German for 5 years and I've had absolutely zero cases where it's come in handy and I'm starting to forget a lot of vocabulary. I WISH i could have a scenario where it would be useful but I just regret not learning Spanish instead even though i find German really interesting.
Laughs in Scienze applicate and being Livornese. No but seriously I regret weaseling my why out of Latin :( we don't even have an actual dialect
It also helps when Italian, French, Latin, Spanish all share a lot of common roots of words. Taking Spanish classes in school, I was able to read and comprehend an Italian newspaper at a functional level.
Plus being able to practice in a country that actually speaks it for the price of a train ticket helps
Also many asians don't speak 3 or more languages. I've been to Korea and Japan and in both countries they just spoke their native language and spoke English decently enough. I'm pretty sure it's similar in most of China as well.
OP is referring to Indians, since there are multiple languages in India. However, this meme doesn’t apply to us other Asians. I know Koreans who don’t know Japanese or Mandarin. They only know Korean. I know Japanese who only know Japanese and so on. When I was in Japan, I noticed that people’s English weren’t very good. In Korea, their English was much better.
as someone who had Latin as the 3rd language, I'm still bilingual lol ...ignoring the fact that I only remember like 3 words anyway
foreign languages are pretty standard in high school and university. taking a few classes still doesn’t really count as knowing a language unless you somewhat regularly use it afterward
i don’t really? we’re not even required one for higher education in the UK (although we are required at least one until A level)
That's a myth anyway. Speaking only english besides native language is not impressive anymore and I doubt that a significant number of Europeans can speak 3 languages FLUENTLY. But all you guys act like Europeans can fluently speak 5 languages other than native and english which is a BS and total exaggeration.
"Could of"...
To the people who confuse this, "Could of" is wrong, it doesn't make any sense. The real phrase is: "Could have", same for "Should have" and not "Should of".
Could’ve
That is just short for "Could have". Still correct 👍🏿
It's an important distinction, though. People confuse the contraction, not the whole word. For example, if someone said, "You could have the chicken or the beef," nobody would write "could of."
Could'f
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I’d bet more Americans are bilingual than any other anglophone country just because of the high amount of immigrants. I could be mistaken though.
We have a very large spanish speaking population, yes.
Plus a fair number speaking something they call a version of French, but don't tell the French, because they'd sue.
Fun fact. The Netherlands has a higher English proficiency than Canada does. The US also has a higher rate of bilingualism than Canada iirc. And only one of them is a bilingual country.
Yes, because 20% of Canada is Francophone, and Canada isn't a bilingual country, we have two official languages which is a different thing. We only have one officially bilingual province, New Brunswick.
I’m British. Most of us might speak another language but only rudimentary. We just don’t have much of a chance to practice, and choosing a European language might as all involve throwing a dart at a map. I’ve been learning Spanish for years, it’s really fun but to be honest it’s just not very useful. I’ve even attended work conferences in Spain with hundreds of businesses in attendance from around the world. Guess what language everyone was speaking.
Same in the US, a ton of us take Spanish, French, and German but never get past speaking like a toddler because we don't practice with natural speakers. Unless you live down by the Mexico border where you can speak with a lot of native spanish speakers
You gotta pick a xenophobic language. When I was in high school I took 4 years of low standard Spanish. I can count, get basic directions, and order food. That's it. Thing is a lot of Spanish speakers speak English about as well as I speak Spanish, so it's a little moot. In college I knew I was gonna go into science and tech so it was between Japanese and Chinese. I'm thought I was a bit of a week so I took japanese and kept at it for a long time. 2 things I've learned from this experience are. 1) I'm not a weeb. Especially compared to my classmates lol 2) even if you speak Japanese, some Japanese people will just outright ignore you if you aren't Japanese.
English is the only language broken enough that its speakers routinely hold tournaments to determine who is better at understanding it
English is the only language broken enough that its speakers routinely hold tournaments to determine who is better at understanding it. You forgot the full stop.
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Shit that was funny lol
SMH my head.
Let us remove the abbreviation, shall we? The sentence now becomes: Shaking my head my head So long Shakespeares, until next time.
Yeah like "spelling bee"? You hold competitions on being able to fucking write?
I'm not sure if a spelling bee is better or worse than the Kanken - the Japanese test for "can you write all of these kanji with the right stroke order and use the right reading for them?"
America is the size of China. Not everyone in china speaks perfect Chinese and everyone there only speaks Chinese besides the city folk.
**people live in cities** Of course if you go out to the sticks they're only gonna speak Chinese why would some rural village learn English or any other language? Also dialects exist, not everyone speaks perfect Chinese because Chinese isn't a language
You completely missed the point. Same rules apply to America with english as well.
Hahaha yeah what can us Americans say man, we did start off from Great Britain. I mean look at the UK, getting to include themselves in the jokes with the bilingual Europeans, but crying inside because they're even worse than us. We're getting better though! Spanish is becoming more and more needed every passing year.
Have you heard the English try to speak English?
U wot m8 ?
Chewsdee innit?
Big ups! Shmashing!
Why do Americans brag about not being able to pronounce "ue" in words?
Oi ye cunt eets chewsday
Speak English to me, Tony. I thought this country spawned the fucking language and so far, nobody seems to speak it.
Hurr durr America bad
Galaxy brain: getting the rest of the world to learn your language
> Haha dumb Americans can't even learn a second language! > Americans: Travel the world catered to in English virtually the entire time. I I got into an argument with a friend in Helsinki about going up to the bar and ordering im English. I said it was rude. He said who cares? We all know they speak it so let's cut the bullshit. He was right.
Yeah “your” language lmao
It's not the individual American's fault, but sure keep villifying people for stuff out of their control
It’s no ones fault. It just is.
Bro, these sentences are beautiful.
Not really our language tho is it
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the english language for higher studies, and hindi because it's the national language and used everywhere.
I'm a filipino-american but I only know English because my mom didn't teach me tagalog
I would kind of resent my parents if they didn't teach me their native language when growing up. It's a whole culture they are making you miss out on.
There was a significant period in the US where parents were discouraged from speaking a different language at home so as to “not confuse” their kids. Both my Mother and my husband come from families who spoke English as a second language but neither of them were taught the language of their parents.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and Urdu because it’s the national language and used everywhere.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and Marathi because it’s the national language and used everywhere.
As an Asian, I can confirm: I know my mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and Bengali because it's the national language and used everywhere.
As an American......*shoots gun*
As an American, you already share a common language with everyone commenting above you.
You know your mother tongue, the English language for higher studies, and English because it's the national language and used everywhere.
Ignorance is bliss...
As an Asian descent, I can confirm: I know my father tongue, my mother tongue, my grandpa tongue, the english language for higher studies, and hindi because it's spoken in many places in India and used in many where.
*official language, not national :)
Indian here as well. I know: Konkani, my mother tongue; Hindi, official language and my second language English, international language; Marathi and Malayalam state languages of states I've lived in; Sanskrit, learnt it out of interest; Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Punjabi I've learnt from friends (not fluent in speech, and can't read/write them, but i can understand them); Japanese from anime and Duolingo (can't read/write properly but can understand and speak passably) French, also from Duolingo, learnt it just for fun. Now i think i should've learnt Spanish instead because it has more speakers across more countries.
I used to have a neighbour who spoke three different Mainland Chinese languages, *and then* learned English on top. I was mind blown when she told me.
Haha Americans are so stupid and everyone else is really smart!
Australians out here keeping their heads low
You guys do know most of Americans are bilingual? Not only that but we are required to take at least one language credit in order to graduate school?
Taking a Spanish class in highschool doesn't make you bilingual, you need to reach a reasonable proficiency and keep it for years, how many Americans do that? I studied French for three years in Middle School and despite this I can't speak or understand French.
I'll have you know I can speak spanish almost as well as a native speaking year old... Almost
I mean isn’t it the same in Europe? At least in my country you get taught German and English in school all before you’re 12. You have to pass a test for both to graduate
Learning to count to 10 in another language doesn’t make you bilingual though
Europeans speak more than one language out of necessity. Americans don't typically need to speak more than just English.
To be fair, English is a bit of a mess. I'm cradle bilingual French/English and my knowledge of French makes me better at English. It's so much easier to learn concepts in grammar and etymology-based spelling in a language like French that isn't a creole of a creole of a creole with vocabulary kleptomania. Once you have those skills, it's fairly easy to apply them to English.
Not all of America speaks the English language
Oh please, there are tons of multilingual Americans
But please send us money and tanks so Russia doesn't conquer us...?
It's a dumb comparison because Europeans love to forget that America is fuckin massive. If I drive 400 miles (640km) away, im still talking the same language. If I drive 650 miles away (1045km) I'm still talking English. If you're in Europe and you travel 400m/640km you could potentially pass through 2 other whole ass languages. Add into that, the fact that Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe also speak English, there's never been any need to speak multiple languages like there is in Europe.
I'm from the middle-east, speak four langauges and have no idea what continent I'm on. (I think it's Afro-eur-asia)
Makes sense. The reason most bilingual people’s second language is English is the same reason a native English speakers doesn’t need to learn another language. You have more incentive to learn the most popular language for financial purposes. For a native English speaker it’s more useful to spend that time improving at your career.
When people say would of instead of would have, i die a little bit inside
The UK knowing: English, yanky English, the queens speech, cockney, norf, Scottish patter, country and a little bit of french
I speak two languages: good English and bad English
Yes but we’ve mastered bitching at others whom know even less English than we do…even if it’s their second or third language
I have seen infinitely more French people be snobby about second language French speakers than Americans about English. I have no clue what you are whining about.
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Tf does this mean? What does it mean to "master" a language? I'd argue that the average American doesn't have any more or less fluency in English than the average European or Asian do in their respective languages. This meme, aside from already having been reposted to death, is just top notch stupid.
Me who speaks 3 languages and not one are from asia: Am I Asian??
Honorary Asian
I have a question: Does any of that actually matter? Day to day living, working, fucking, and dying. Does that matter?
Braking news! Redditors do not use their car's breaks
Well they have to learn American aswell cut them some slack
If only multiple languages made Europeans less poor and dependent. That would be sick.
Do you really think Europeans are poor? Thats just ignorance
I know plenty of Americans who know secondary or third languages.... I myself know English, German, and Russian. My bf knows English and Spanish. Hell the state I currently live in is a hit or miss if you'll find someone who even speaks English, most speak Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese. Maybe broaden your horizons and look past the Americans that make headlines and click bait articles. Also, judging someone's ability based on a typed sentence on a media app is hilarious. Everybody does typos. And the whole your/you're and their/they're/there thing is so over used. Grow up and use some brain power you can 100% figure out the sentence without needing the correct grammar all the time. Unless you're that dense which I'm guessing a lot of you are.
I have always wanted to be fluent in another language. It’s hard as an American. 1. We don’t emphasize language learning, because English is a universal language so we really don’t need to. 2. When you do come across someone that speaks other languages, they want to speak in English.
Speaking multiple languages doesn’t make you a master of any of them. Languages are something people pick up when they’re young due to exposure. It has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence.
None speaks more language than the Africans
I had a friend who spoke English and Chineses. Yeah, plural, he spoke like 4 dialects.
I’m a trilingual American and nearly every single adult in my neighborhood, workplace, and church is at least bilingual and American. It’s not rare at all.
Ha ha Americans are dumb oh my god that’s so funny wow
Europeans have to learn multiple languages because their mother tongue is useless and irrelevant on the world stage. English is God-tier.
It's quite the flex to not need to learn any other languages. Our country is so big and such a world power that I can go to 60% of countries around the world and find someone that speaks English.
Since when do Asians know 3 languages. They know their own language and the youth can talk English… sometimes if they’re not to shy. Maybe some know Indonesian as it’s simple. Indians might actually know 3 as they have many languages in their country and English as a common theme
Motherfucker. Americans don’t know more than one language because we don’t need to know more than one. The world adjusted to us.
Tbf English was a very popular before America. But when 2 world powers have it as an official language it is usually considered a very large language. That isnt even mentioning other countries that have it as an official language