As an American, I found your views interesting! I am an English speaker who is fluent in Spanish as a second language. I understand your desire for people to integrate by learning the majority language, but I had the knee-jerk reaction that it clashes against my ideals of individual freedom and America as a “salad bowl”. I hesitate to call not learning a local language lazy because I understand not everybody has the means or the environment to do so. I feel communication is everyone’s responsibility and love that I have been able to experience the unique US hispanic culture through the language. I take your point about the detrimental effects of isolation. In an ideal world we’d all just be able to communicate! You definitely gave me things to think on :)
An incident in my country the Netherlands. I was in a group with people from Amsterdam. The all were speaking English. I asked why. They answered that there was a American lady. Altough she lives here for more than 20 years, but she could not speak Dutch. I have a passive knowledge of English, but not much experienced for active use. But I found it an occasion to practice my English. But I spoke Dutch to other Dutch people. Then she was ennoyed and a little bit angry why we still speak our own language at each other. My opinion is that I can speak my own language in my own country. German may speak German with other Germans in Germany, for example
Of course. I went to a party where almost everyone was speaking Spanish. I felt a bit lost coz I didn’t understand anything unless I went up and conversed in English. But it made me want to learn Spanish, not get angry lol. Lady just sounds like a stereotypical American
I understand what you are saying but the issue is....most english speaking people do not know a second language. So when they go overseas either to study or work or holiday they do not learn the language at all. Very rarely will you meet people born in Australia who know another language than english. .
The issue is, I am worried about most people in the world moving to just speaking english, as obviously most videos on the internet are in english and well the best selling books are also in english.
Another incident.I learned Hindi and speak it quite well. I I attended a book fair in Delhi. I want to look for some Hindi books. But there were many books in the English language. English is the prestige language in India. I saw a European looking man at a table. He was from an English publisher company. He was looking around and saw some Hindi books. He opened one an called cleaning lady and asked her what that is. She didn't understand English and called a manager. The Englishman was irritated and asked him why there were books in native vernacular which he don't understand. He advised him to make the second page of such books in English, so that other people can understand what is written. I found this incident weird. I am happy to know an Asian language so that I can dive into a completely different culture. I agree with you. Natürlich spreche ich auch Deutsch. Deutsch ist für uns Niederländer die einfachste Fremdsprache.
hey man! I promised sometime ago in the comments section to check up on you later to make sure I don't part ways with your channel because youtube algorithms decided so, und jetzt ist es soweit 😊
And that's terrible. Your parents didn't have to go to Germany. You are not a native Russian, you are not a native Kazakh, you are not a native German, you are not a native Australian. I mean you don't know deeply the customs, traditions, epics (all these lullabies, fairy tales, bylinas, folk songs, folk dances and so on), cultural peculiarities, linguistic peculiarities. It's as if you have no homeland at all. What you have shown as a sample of Russian humour most Russians will not find funny, because it is not funny. There's a very big plus. You're a polyglot. You know a lot of cultures. But the downside is that your knowledge of those cultures is superficial. A person should have one culture that he knows very well. And the rest you can know superficially.
![[自言自语] 我会说汉语，但我听不懂](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DOXw53Sytms/mqdefault.jpg)
As an American, I found your views interesting! I am an English speaker who is fluent in Spanish as a second language. I understand your desire for people to integrate by learning the majority language, but I had the knee-jerk reaction that it clashes against my ideals of individual freedom and America as a “salad bowl”. I hesitate to call not learning a local language lazy because I understand not everybody has the means or the environment to do so. I feel communication is everyone’s responsibility and love that I have been able to experience the unique US hispanic culture through the language.
I take your point about the detrimental effects of isolation. In an ideal world we’d all just be able to communicate! You definitely gave me things to think on :)
Wow, cool video! It was interesting to learn about your origin and chinese migration to Australia! :)
An incident in my country the Netherlands. I was in a group with people from Amsterdam. The all were speaking English. I asked why. They answered that there was a American lady. Altough she lives here for more than 20 years, but she could not speak Dutch. I have a passive knowledge of English, but not much experienced for active use. But I found it an occasion to practice my English. But I spoke Dutch to other Dutch people. Then she was ennoyed and a little bit angry why we still speak our own language at each other. My opinion is that I can speak my own language in my own country. German may speak German with other Germans in Germany, for example
Of course. I went to a party where almost everyone was speaking Spanish. I felt a bit lost coz I didn’t understand anything unless I went up and conversed in English. But it made me want to learn Spanish, not get angry lol. Lady just sounds like a stereotypical American
I understand what you are saying but the issue is....most english speaking people do not know a second language. So when they go overseas either to study or work or holiday they do not learn the language at all. Very rarely will you meet people born in Australia who know another language than english. .
The issue is, I am worried about most people in the world moving to just speaking english, as obviously most videos on the internet are in english and well the best selling books are also in english.
Another incident.I learned Hindi and speak it quite well. I I attended a book fair in Delhi. I want to look for some Hindi books. But there were many books in the English language. English is the prestige language in India. I saw a European looking man at a table. He was from an English publisher company. He was looking around and saw some Hindi books. He opened one an called cleaning lady and asked her what that is. She didn't understand English and called a manager. The Englishman was irritated and asked him why there were books in native vernacular which he don't understand. He advised him to make the second page of such books in English, so that other people can understand what is written. I found this incident weird. I am happy to know an Asian language so that I can dive into a completely different culture. I agree with you. Natürlich spreche ich auch Deutsch. Deutsch ist für uns Niederländer die einfachste Fremdsprache.
hey man! I promised sometime ago in the comments section to check up on you later to make sure I don't part ways with your channel because youtube algorithms decided so, und jetzt ist es soweit 😊
Indeed - you are very half and half German 😂
And that's terrible. Your parents didn't have to go to Germany. You are not a native Russian, you are not a native Kazakh, you are not a native German, you are not a native Australian. I mean you don't know deeply the customs, traditions, epics (all these lullabies, fairy tales, bylinas, folk songs, folk dances and so on), cultural peculiarities, linguistic peculiarities. It's as if you have no homeland at all. What you have shown as a sample of Russian humour most Russians will not find funny, because it is not funny.
There's a very big plus. You're a polyglot. You know a lot of cultures. But the downside is that your knowledge of those cultures is superficial. A person should have one culture that he knows very well. And the rest you can know superficially.
我在你关于中文学习的视频里给你留言了。Chinese is not so hard as you said,what you need is just real life chinese.Do you have a WeChat account?