Wake the f**k up Americans! I'm here to talk some sense into you!
Well, hold on a second, I'm Canadian.
When I say Americans, I'm including Canadians in that
because Canadians, admit it, we're really just the 51st state.
We're like California with igloos.
So, Canadians, Americans. Same thing
Anyway, what was I saying?
Wake the f**k up Americans! I'm here to talk some sense into you!
As a nation, we suck with languages.
43% of all people around the world are bilingual.
That's includes over 50% of the people in Europe.
And, in some countries like Indonesia and the Philippines,
virtually everybody is bilingual.
And, it's very common in a lot of countries
for people to speak 3, 4 or even 5 languages on a regular basis.
But, in America, only 20% of the people are bilingual.
And guess what.
Almost all of those people are immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Amongst homegrown Americans, very few are bilingual.
And, in the northern province of Canada, the situation is not much different.
Most of the people who are bilingual are immigrants or Francophone Canadians,
French-speaking Canadians.
Anglophone Canadians are generally monolingual,
very few of them are bilingual.
In Australia, the numbers are even worse.
And in Europe, guess which country has the lowest level of bilingualism.
Hint:
The UK and Ireland!
So the point I'm making is that Anglophones basically do not become bilingual.
I don't want to say that Anglophones are lazy, but...
Why the hell are we so damn lazy?!
Well, obviously, it's because of a lack of incentive.
English is the international language,
so why should I put in all this time and effort to speak another language
when other people will just speak English with me?
Isn't it kind of sort of arrogant
to expect all the other people to put in all the effort to accommodate us?
Anybody who has traveled has problably seen Americans or other Anglophones
getting frustrated with the locals when they couldn't speak English.
But, if those Anglophones had ever learned a second language for themselves,
maybe they would be able to understand and empathize with that other person,
and find the way to communicate with them.
The truth is, English is not spoken by most people in the world,
despite the fact that it's the de facto international language.
Most people simply don't speak English, unless you stick to the main tourist traps,
and who likes cheesy tourist traps?
Knowing another major language can greatly help you communicate around the world.
There's also no guarantee that English will be
the international language for much longer.
Not too long ago, the international language was French.
And in the future, maybe it will be Chinese or Spanish. Who knows?
Well, problably won't be Chinese, but you never know.
The number of Spanish-speakers is growing rapidly,
and a lot of Spanish-speaking countries are in the process of developing rapidly.
So, Spanish could become much more important in the near future.
But, even if Spanish never becomes the de facto international language,
there's no denying that knowing Spanish would be incredibly useful
in a lot of places around the world.
What do I care? I never leave my hometown.
But, even if there were no practical benefits to learning a second language,
learning another language simply makes you smarter.
Do you want to be stupid?
Learning a second language actually makes your brain grow.
It increases your memory.
It increases your attention span.
It helps you deal with ambiguities and nuance in meanings.
It makes you better at multitasking and adapting to new circumstances.
And learning a second language helps offset the beginning of dementia by years,
up to five years in fact.
Wow
Learning a language is brain exercise.
Learning a language also helps you in less tangible ways,
it helps you understand different ways of seeing reality.
Look at this color right here, what color is this?
If you're an English speaker, you probably thought that's blue.
Now, have a look at this color right here.
What color is that?
If you're an English-speaker, you might be thinking:
"Well, that's a shade of blue. That's light blue."
But, if you're Japanese,
then you probably thought this is a different color.
That's not blue, it's actually "watercolor".
In Japanese, these are two different colors.
People perceive them as different colors
because they have two different names for these colors.
But, wait that doesn't make sense, they're just two shades of the same color.
I don't understand! Oh really?
Okay, well. How about this color right here?
Would you say that's red?
Okay.
How about this color right here?
If you're an English-speaker, you probably said that's pink.
But, there are a lot of languages in the world that do not see this as pink.
They see this as a shade of red,
the same way that you see light blue as a shade of blue.
Weird
These ways of perceiving reality are the core of what we call culture.
By understanding different ways of perceiving reality,
we are understanding cultural variation, cultural difference.
That greater cultural understanding can bring people together,
can create greater international relationships,
and can maybe even prevent wars!
How many wars have broken out
because the two sides couldn't comprehend each other way of perceiving the situation?
I can only imagine.
So, Anglophones, stop being the laughingstock of the world,
and stop selling yourself short.
Start learning a foreign language and expand your mind.
Hmmm...
This is Paul. Thank you for watching the Langfocus channel.
Leave your comments down below.
Talk to you later, have a good night.