https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
You do the Jaguar math.
To be fair, rest of countries added up have more English-speaking population than the US. Of you would have to also account for the internet access and general social media presence.
Because Americans take over platforms and force them to obey American rules while pretending to be neutral. For example, LemmyWorld touts itself as an instance for everyone which is hosted in Europe.
But its /News and /Politics community discourse is forcefully limited to the USA. This is incredibly weird if you stop to think about it for a second.
Imagine if .ml had a /Politics community where the only allowed politics was China. And an unreliable biased Chinese website was to grade sources a credible, instead of the unreliable American MBFC website. Nobody would think that would be normal. But do the same thing for America and everything is fine.
Except if the comments are german.
In that case:
𝔇𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔢 𝔎𝔬𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔰𝔢𝔨𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔦𝔰𝔱 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔪 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔅𝔲𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔯𝔢𝔭𝔲𝔟𝔩𝔦𝔨 𝔇𝔢𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔠𝔥𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡!I think there was a conscious effort to emulate reddit subs, which is daft but that’s what happened.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
In their relevant communities yes. But not in a world news.
People from around the globe don’t need to hear about the latest epstein fart.
Yes plenty. I didn’t say “I do not live in the US.”
it would be so weird of .ml only allowed one perspective
Would be even weirder if people started going into meltdown mode every time a non-mbfc approved site was posted on .ml. Screaming at the .ml mods to delete the post and constantly linking their Zionist-ran mbfc site because they have been indoctrinated into using it.
Yeah imagine that
yeah, I want to hear more about which of your former ministers have shit themselves at McDonalds!
The US population is grouped together in one giant pool instead of spread out by state like Europe is grouped by individual country. We focus on national news that affects the large population, and stuff that happens on other states becsuse of the shared identity, while European countries don’t have the same kind of European Union shenanigans that affect all of Europe and mostly post about country level stuff. Communities in languages other than English also tend to be posted in separate communites further separating their discussions from the general purpose communities.
We are also louder, which also contributes, but that is not as big of a deal as the sheer numbers.
plus, you know, inheritors of the British empire - practically an unbroken chain of hegemonic anglophones who refuse to learn another language
While a huge portion of the population chooses not to become fluent in a language, because nearly everything within hundreds of miles of where they live uses the same language by default, we still provide opportunities to learn languages and in some areas people are commonly bilingual.
It can be hard to maintain a language without frequent exposure. I had some classes in Spanish and French, but without a large population that speaks either language in my area I just forgot it over time. Moved tons place where we do have a lot of people who speak Spanish and English, but since I’m not part of their community my exposure is limited to the occasional festival or signage as nobody needs me to impose my attempt to learn their language on them.
It isn’t all about refusal, it is mostly lack of exposure.
I actually has another language, but kinda never used it. The Mandarin part of my brain is sort of “inactive” ever since I immigrated to the US, because I mostly like to watch western content, and Chinese drama is way too censored, cliche, and never explores new concepts Most of the stuff is WW2 drama, or its about the distsnt past like the imperial dynasties, its too much cringy romance stuff, has this weird conservative “men strong, woman weak” trope, no LGBT characters, no plot twists because every plot is follows a predictible pattern. I never once seen an accurate portrayal of child abuse. Its always the kid character being portrayed as a psycopath, and they never portray the parents with any sort of blame. So much Filial Piety propaganda in everyday media.
And ever since I had depression, I feel like none of the people in the Chinese-American community (those who were born in China) could even understand what depression is like. Whereas at least those who grew up under a western culture sort of understands what depression is.
I just don’t find Mandarin to be very useful, so its kinda a repressed memory now.
I mean, what would communicating with mainland Chinese people even look like? Those nationalists are just gonna call me a “汉奸” (han traitor) merely for the fact that I’m living in the west. Hearing a Chinese language whether it be Cantonese or Mandarin give me PTSD because of how toxic the community is.
I mean, I’m cis, but imagine if I came out as trans or gay (I’m not, I’m saying hypothetically if I were), my parents would tell me to go to the 18th level of hell and my entire extended family would look at me in a weird way. I’m struggling with depression and everyone just assumes I’m being lazy. No fuck off, I don’t need your stupid necklace to “protect me from evil spirits”, I need my meds. I sort of just expect anyone speaking Cantonese or Mandarin to be extremely conservative.
As for other languages, they tried teaching spanish in middle school and highschool but I didn’t retain and memory of most of it. Unless they were taking us on a school trip to Spain or Mexico, its very impractical to learn it. And I do not live in a hispanic nighborhood so its practically impossible to learn. I mean, I couldn’t think of a scenario where I ever needed to speak another language. And I already understand enough Cantonese to understand my parents gossipping with other people, I don’t really want to have a conversation with them anyways, so no need to expand my vocabulary.
Yeah, the geography certainly plays a role - much like it does for Britain having ~30 miles of ocean between it and the rest of Europe.
But the broad trend in the States has been a narrowing of languages. Like, a century ago there were local papers printed in German. Those started disappearing during WW1 and were completely gone by the end of WW2. And, of course, that is dwarfed by the number of First Nations languages that have been driven to the edge extinction, if not outright extinguished already.
I think if Lemmy wants to have less of a US bent to topics and perspectives, then they’ll have to follow ich_iel’s example and stubbornly commit to a language that isn’t english. The way how the internet collapses geography, conversation trends toward orbiting the densest population of monoglots.
It is a self reinforcing system, and the same reason that English has become so widespread worldwide.
Increased communication across wider areas promote common languages to be more accessible to more people, so in the case of the US this means each time people communicate it is more likely to be in English. Sure, some stupid laws have helped out too but this is a trend that was going to happen in the US for the same reasons English is increasingly used worldwide, but we don’t have a national language that English is being added to to promote being bilingual. Quebec has been fighting the trend though legislation since it was happening there as well.
Even regional dialects of English are being homogenized within the US. It is less likely for people traveling across many states to be unable to understand a regional dialect as was fairly common before cheap long distance communication.
I am actively working on learning spanish as an American, because I want to be able to speak to people when I go to central and south America.
I have far less interest in learning french or german, because Europe is both expensive to get to for me, and expensive to stay in relative to other places I have equal interest in travelling to. And besides that, if I were to travel to Europe, I’ve been told that everyone there already speaks english anyway. And besides that, I’ve been told that even if I try to learn french or german, the locals will just speak to me in English anyway since it is faster for them. Due to this, learning these languages largely becomes an intellectual exercise performed for its own sake. And if I’m going to spend hours doing some sort of intellectual hobby, I could just as easily want to learn to paint or play the guitar or perform statistical analysis on the different varieties of weeds in my back yard.
yeah, broadly speaking, there are two languages spoken on this continent and french is not one of them (désolée Quebec)
There are just more of us than any single EU country.
My guess is because the US is a dumpster fire that is exploding right now, and let’s be honest: who doesn’t slow down to “rubber neck” a dumpster fire when they’re passing by?
Once we’ve completely fallen on our asses, and worn ourselves out crying like little babies, I’m sure the noise will subside.
Until then you probably want to get a lemmy client that supports keyword filtering and you can at least lessen the noise a little.
~As an American, I don’t know if “rubber necking” is a known colloquialism outside of the US. So, if you don’t know, it’s a term used to refer to the assholes on the road who slow down to gawk at traffic accidents as if they’ve never seen one before; very, very annoying.~
have you set a preferred language? if you do, lemmy filters posts in other languages
Are you sure? Seems like the news magazines are very centered on Israel and Palestine.
I see German content here all the time, even though I don’t understand it or follow it.
I’ve blocked so much german.
It’s either that or learn German and I’m way too busy scrolling for that.
I’ve accidentally learned a good amount of German from lemmy, actually. I didnt mean to, but from similar words, to looking up Rammstein lyrics, I had a base. From that base, and context, I’m actually learning a good bit of German without intention. Sometimes I read a German headline and it takes me a second to realize I’m reading German. I come across a word I don’t know and I’m like “oh shit, I’m reading German”. It’s honestly been my favorite part of lemmy, I struggled with Spanish in a classroom setting and here I am learning German on accident. Granted, I couldn’t pretend to know how to pronounce half of it, but I’m learning to read it.
Whats the latest word you’ve learned?
Probably eisbrecher, honestly. Because it started coming up on a Rammstein playlist. Which is cool because it gives me the base for ice and breaker, making it that much easier for me to pick up on other words in context, that I may have missed otherwise. Even moreso because I read so much climate news, which is important to me as the US dwindles in climate research, I hope to learn more French and German. I just wish I could learn my grandparents native languages of Norwegian and swedish. Those are much harder for me, even though I’ve actually put effort into those. It just doesn’t come as easy to me.
The good news is German has consistent pronunciation so it’s easy to learn that part
You have to be a bit careful, because some people deliberately talk in wrong German (“Zangendeutsch”, where words are translated from English by “force”).
That makes sense, like learning English from Internet memes?
Worse.
The German you read from Zangendeutsch memes are almost as grammatically accurate as the German accent you got from Schwarzenegger.
Imagine the most broken grammar and then you get that.On top the grammar is also non-applicable.
Upside: You can still get some idea of what the meme is about. :)
𝔅𝔲𝔱 𝔴𝔥𝔶?
Everyone slows down to watch the car wreck.
It’s good if you filter out that shit based in keyword. I’ve had so much less stress by filtering out any posts with the words {“Trump”,“Vance”, “Putin”, “Israel”, “Republican”, “Democrat”, “Fart Sandwiches”}
Damn, all my Fart Sandwich memes getting blocked. 😭
I’d spend time in All and filter out a bunch of US-centric news communities if I was you. I did that with loads of communions I didn’t want to see stuff from.
Why have you filtered out your communions, my child?
It is important that you not desecrate the sacrament and accept the blood and body as they were intended, not strained or filtered.
Also, please do not chew the wafer.
It took a long time before I started actively filtering. My current feed is mostly what I’m asking for, at this point.
What do you mean?
Because the Europeans post in their weirdo languages.
Nee hoor, dat doen wij helemaal niet!
Squomp, squendled scruinion.
Nem
NEIN
DOCH!
OH!
ABSOLUT NICHT!
É raro mas acontece.
Kamo sreće
Waar heb je het over?
I am Canadian at heart
Does maple syrup run through your veins?
