Can American Identify These European Languages? (2 Viewers)

[Boyo]

I get what you mean but at the same time I’m pretty sure you would be the same with Asian languages or African languages. It’s not necessarily coming from a place of hate or anything, just from a place of not being exposed to all the languages in the world to the point of being able to differentiate them.

Without being a kpop fan, I still could identify some Asian languages because 1. I was interested in it enough to look after other languages, 2. they teach us enough in school to identify them. But I think the bigger part is that I cared, so I looked after them.
Of course, I don’t know all languages around the world, I wish I could, but I think recognize German and Russian is basic, especially nowadays. Maybe I just feel like this because as a European, it’s easy to tell European languages apart.

 

[Ahsoka]

Without being a kpop fan, I still could identify some Asian languages because 1. I was interested in it enough to look after other languages, 2. they teach us enough in school to identify them. But I think the bigger part is that I cared, so I looked after them.
Of course, I don’t know all languages around the world, I wish I could, but I think recognize German and Russian is basic, especially nowadays. Maybe I just feel like this because as a European, it’s easy to tell European languages apart.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have the education required for that though, especially in the US where we're surrounded by English to our north (with a bit of French, but mostly English) nothing to our east or west, and Spanish to our south. Then in school we often learn some Spanish, with very few other options. If we want to look into languages we can ofc, but its not like being someone who lives in a European country where you have presumably more language in school and a country with another language a few hour drive away most of the time. We dont have that, if I wanted to go to a country that primarily spoke another language I'd have to drive multiple days or take a plane ride, which for a lot of Americans is just not feasible. So again, the lack of knowledge isn't necessarily malice or people thinking that all of Europe is one country. I'm sure some Americans do think that but not the majority. It's just part of growing up in a country that is very isolated from other places.

 

[Dreamer_of_Songs]

I guessed almost every one of these languages right except for Polish (and I used to have a teacher and a teacher aide who spoke in Polish with one another *this year like 14-15 years ago*).

 

[Boyo]

Not everyone is lucky enough to have the education required for that though, especially in the US where we're surrounded by English to our north (with a bit of French, but mostly English) nothing to our east or west, and Spanish to our south. Then in school we often learn some Spanish, with very few other options. If we want to look into languages we can ofc, but its not like being someone who lives in a European country where you have presumably more language in school and a country with another language a few hour drive away most of the time. We dont have that, if I wanted to go to a country that primarily spoke another language I'd have to drive multiple days or take a plane ride, which for a lot of Americans is just not feasible. So again, the lack of knowledge isn't necessarily malice or people thinking that all of Europe is one country. I'm sure some Americans do think that but not the majority. It's just part of growing up in a country that is very isolated from other places.

You may feel like you should defend Americans, but you shouldn’t. I get your point and it wasn’t an attack against Americans.
But I still think if someone cares enough about languages, they can watch like 2 videos on yt or read about them. It’s not only about how many languages we learn in school or how close other countries are. Some Europeans can never visit even the neighbor country. It’s that we care to learn about different languages and each other.
Let’s agree to disagree.

 

[dark_tranquility]

It hits different.

Easy to make a mistake on that?

 

[92alice]

Yes because my mom is from Europe and I have relatives all over Europe and I got to travel to many European countries. I probably know more European languages than Asian languages.

 

[dark_tranquility]

I never learnt my mums language since my parents divorced when I was five,
Guess I have to learn Thai myself.