I’ve been to Thailand. It’s not the Americans that are complaining, it’s the British and the Australians, both of which also speak English.
Why are you jumping to Americans?
Probably because if your business is based around profiting from American tourists, you’re probably going to need to know some English. It seems to me like when money is involved people tend to find a way to communicate what they need to regardless of what languages they share, though. And obviously this does not excuse rude tourists.
Or tourists in general. I’m Estonian. Loads of Estonians go to Thailand. I doubt any of them speak Thai. Most speak English to some degree.
Why are people from the USA always called Americans?
Would you prefer “yanks”?
USAmerican, USAian, USAn, lUSA?
USAmerican is my go to yep.
Are you joking though? I’ve never heard this phrase uttered out loud except by that one miss America contestant who was derided for being stupid.
Found the lUSA
Judging by their instance they’re german where “US-Amerikaner” is a pretty common term, never heard it used in english though.
Unitedstatians. Thats how we call them here (estadounidense)
Why does someone always smugly point this out in these threads?
Because there’s always got to be some young “boo America” edgelord contrarian that thinks they’re really doing something by saying it. But really they are just an idiot in a long line of idiots who isn’t saying anything at all.
US Americans are seen by basically everyone as the most obnoxious tourists on this planet. Their self importance and undeserved national pride is second to none and it shows in every thread like this. Its just fun to see them get defensive when anyone points it out.
This is literally what that sign is about and its odd that you are confused that people would point this out.
Why are you assuming the sign is about Americans? There’s no reference to the US anywhere except OP’s title
Speaking of obnoxious self importance
No youuu 😭
Is all i get from that.
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.
While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.
And saying North America includes Canada, and I think out of respect to the Canadians they don’t wanna be lumped together with us
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
Ireland is part of the British Isles, so you could even call people from the Republic of Ireland british (and then run away really fast).
I recommend not doing this 😂 I prefer to call the British isles “the European archipelago” :)
TEA
Just what people commonly understand so people say it. I always read it in a disapproving Russian accent because of too much TV, the americans
Because calling anyone else an American is insulting.
Because they’re the only country with America in their name whereas United States is shared by Mexico
Also in English there’s a distinction between North and South America, with the supercontinent being referred to as “The Americas”, so America isn’t really ambiguous, they’re also geologically and environmentally distinct enough that “The Americas” isn’t used so much and “New World” is often more relevant to include Australia as another somewhat culturally similar sparsely populated former colonial area.
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In Portuguese (as spoken in Portugal, Brazil, USA, Japan, Ghana, wherever) they’re an americano/a but in English (as spoken in USA, UK, Brazil, Portugal, Nepal, wherever) they’re South American but not American because it’s a linguistic difference rather than a geographical/cultural one
I can’t wait for us to start exploring the galaxy and giving aliens shit for not speaking English lol
I’m sawwry, I don’t speak ‘at squeaky squacky, beep boop shit. Why don’t you try talking like an American?! You’re in American space space!
I’m an American living in Chicagoland, the 3rd largest metropolitan area in the country. I can drive for over 900 miles in any direction and everyone still speaks English, though some jerks Quebec wouldn’t admit it at gunpoint. Even foreign born immigrants who never took a class can usually manage enough pidgin English to get by, even if it’s just a hundred words or less.
America also has the largest English speaking pop globally. More than the next 3 countries combined. England is 5th on that list.
America had been the dominant global source of money, technology and education since WW2. Though it’s in it’s slow decline arc, good luck explaining that to uncritical people who were spoon fed the doctrine of American Exceptionalism since infancy.
Why do many, if not most Americans assume everybody else speaks English? Why the hell wouldn’t we?
Europeans and Brits go on vacation abroad and it’s usually elsewhere in Europe. Huge swathes of the world had to learn English when the British Empire was large and in charge. The US picked up where the Brits left off. It’s been that way for literally centuries.
There’s a dozen or two languages they might need to be at least passingly familiar with, on top of English which is needed for business, industry, education, flying/air traffic control, and gawd knows what else. It’s the lingua franca of the modern age, and if they have no other language in common, two people with a passing knowledge of English can communicate at a basic level.
Americans go on vacation and travel three time zones over without leaving the continental US. A small town is basically the same in New York and California. You can go anywhere in America or Canada (or most major foreign cities) and find at least a few things you know and are familiar with, from chains like Hilton and McDonald’s to independently owned clones like Motels and Diners. Our country, a third of the continent (more or less) is larger than all of continental Europe.
So yeah, that’s why. Don’t worry, the planet will probably kill us off within a generation or two, assuming the Orange Idiot or some foreign despot like Putin decides to end it all early with nuclear hellfire. So if it’s a problem for you, at least it’s a problem that will solve itself.
I was not suspecting this amount of cope. But here we are.
We know WHY you do it. We just aren’t very happy with it.
Also, I find it hilarious how US Americans can seamlessly switch between “we’re so very united, everywhere is the same, same food, same culture, same language” and “we’re really 50 separate countries that each do their own thing, don’t judge all of us for the bullshit legislation some of us choose to have”.
I wonder if there was a time in which a similar sign was written in Latin.
I’m American and I am continually shocked and grateful how commonly I’m catered to internationally. I mean it’s not fair in a sense but also there does need to be a global language and the English happened to be the right kind of assholes to win that honor.
It’s not necessarily just for Americans. English is the most spoken language in the world when you include people’s second language. That German tourist probably isn’t going to know Thai and that Thai cafe probably isn’t going to know German, but they can muddle though with English.
Right. I was addressing the title of the post. I am assuming Americans are among the worst among presuming English should be spoken everywhere, but I don’t fall into that category. I marvel at the fact that it’s so widely spoken.
It’s always so foreign to me that anglophones never need to switch to English to communicate internationally, that’s just their everyday language
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy to me and I’m an anglophone who barely knows other languages. It’s a marvel.
Why’s everyone assuming this isn’t in America? I’ve seen signs like this here and it’s immigrants’ way of saying “listen we’re trying to speak your language well, but please be sympathetic as it’s our second (or more) language”. We’re generally fine with people not speaking English when we’re outside America, it’s inside our borders that we’re tremendous assholes about it
Because the plants and the building look very Thai, or at least tropical and not in the US.
Besides people speaking bad English to you are braver and more engaging than the average person in general. Id speak bad English with just about anyone before talking to most of my family lol.
Thanks for the examples
So here’s something wild I learned.
To Canadians, when I speak French, I have a very thick American accent. However, when I speak English to Canadians, they really can’t tell my accent (presumably because I live in a bordering state?).
I always respect anyone who knows just enough English to communicate something simple/frequent. Because there is no fucking way they’d understand what I was trying to say in their language.
Man that’s crazy, I speak French with an undertone of a Belgian accent, but pretty close to French general accent (I know every dept has their accent, chill!), but Canadians have an extremely heavy and weird non standard accent compared to other people.
We do?
I certainly don’t. It’s a huge part (besides cost) of why I find the prospect of travelling to other countries to be very intimidating. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass for the locals when I can’t communicate with them properly.
I’d think that this sign is not there because of American tourists. All the Americans I’ve met while traveling, have acknowledged that English being their native language is a privilege and have been very polite towards people who don’t speak English that well. But in Europe English has become the universal language and it’s easy to forget that not everyone can speak it as well.
I was responding to the title, which was typed by OP, not to the image. I don’t know why you responded as if my comment was directed at the image instead…?
Because western imperialism from English speaking countries has been around for at least 500 years and it’s given lots of countries time to learn it.
But also I make sure to know how to introduce myself and ask if they speak English in basically every language I interact with as to not start with it. And then I have conversational understanding of about 7 languages.
I would say the English language supremacy started around 300 years ago, before that the preferred language was french
I’m enjoying hearing the stories about African slag infiltrating France and how the olds there are freaking out.
Can only import so much of a workforce before they start becoming part of the culture.
Historical though, the French had many colonies in Africa. That’s why many parts of Africa already speak French, or at least their own dialectic of it.
Even if you speak Thai, complaining about someone’s foreign language abilities as a foreigner is rude.
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The End
Would have been really funny if you said
Thai End
there
Accurate af
Because they have no official language so any language can be used in the US
