Languages

Ironically, in second place is the guy who never speaks.

@Jinx26 He has a silent way of saying things!

@Jinx26 The person who knows 3 Separate Systems of (Hand) Sign Languages Proficiently is obviously more cultured and refined than the American that babbles nonsensically. ;p

Having been born in Alabama I can say this is true. However give some credit to Mississippi for bringing down the average as well.

There even are places where English completely disappears.
Why, in America, they haven't spoken it for years!

@katfairy where would that be, out of curiosity?

@zhouhuanyue It’s a quote from a song. A humourus song called «Why can’t the English (teach their children how to speak)?» from the Musical _MY Fair Lady._ You should look it up It’s good. The entire verse goes like this

Oh, why can't the English learn to
Set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
Well, in America, they haven't used it for years!

Good times.

@CaptainBlood sorry but i dont remeber what youre replying to here #9851458
but scottish is bad sounding to people?
the amount of people who mock our accents, its hard to say

@katfairy Ey! I see what you did there *finger guns*

«Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards,
Which is absolutely frightening.»

Given i live in the USA and work retail I have some languages i can't even understand coming through the store that do not sound like anything that remotely sounds like a known language. Some people here seem to speak soly in grunts, screams, and swears.

I don't think the survey counts first languages. Hence the low US numbers.

I'm doing my part to raise those figures though; Spanish, Swedish, Russian, and working on Mandarin.

@CarlSailor I think the first language is counted, so you have some problems :P

@drunk_dane There's no way 30% of the US population speaks no languages. There aren't gangs of cavemen roaming around.

@Monty It's not speak no language, it's only speak a language halfway, if you only know half of the words grammar and sentence structure in a language, then you speak half of that language.

as an american, can confirm XP

since americans have to pay for education and i cant afford it, im teaching myself japanese using things like memrise.com and the Genki workbooks; its slow-going having no guidance but i know at least a little bit of it, so i can tentatively claim i know 1 language after adding everything up XDD

Hi! Where did you get the numbers?

Either we have too many young children or the people thought it was languages that you know other than your first language. AMERICA HOW!?!?!?

At least we're bringing the average up ;)

@CollabPrimaryColors Latinos like me are the only reason it isn't lower

I have a friend that can speak 4 languages. I love to joke around and told her I could speak two languages. "English and Bad English." I honestly thought she was gonna kill me.

@MandalMotors Grandpa used to say: "I can speak every language except Greek."

But when I asked him to speak Dutch or Arabic or something like that, he'd say: "Oh, that's Greek to me."

Really, I think the .07 is generous! LOL