The distance from Atlanta to LA is about the same as the distance between Paris and Beirut. There is somewhat less linguistic diversity on the Altanta/LA route than the Paris/Beirut route (because of the genocide).
There’s actually significantly more but you’d have to stop ignoring indigenous languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#/media/File:Langs_N.Amer.png whereas from Paris to Beirut it’s Indo-European over Turkic to Semitic, that’s all (assuming you manage to avoid Hungary, that’s Uralic, just like Finns, Sami and and Estonians. Then there’s the Basques, but that’s really it. Yes Albanian is Indo-European even if it’s hardly recognisable).
Of those languages, the population is very small and centralized to the point of being not noteworthy as a factor in language learning. This is not to mention that the map you’ve cited was a pre-contact linguistic graph, and unfortunately many of those languages have become extinct with their unique aspects lost forever to humanity. Compared to Europe, the states have become a desert of language with few natural language learning opportunities outside of English and Spanish
Fun fact: Some places in Europe “bilingual” is used as an euphemism for students with middle eastern backgrounds. When used like this it carries lots of negative connotations and authorities try to limit the concentration of “bilingual” students at schools as they’re seen as the source of all kinds of trouble.
You can drive through twelve villages neighbouring villages and discover twelve kinds of xenophobia. They’ll still gang up on you if you try to join in, though.
Meanwhile, many africans speak 2 languages in their family, a third one for people that don’t speak one of theses two and have studied french and english.
So, exactly how it works in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesian.
They speak native local language from their city, other two from other islands, English for international language, sometimes Chinese, Malay, Arabic, Korean, or Japanese. Not to forget the national language, Indonesian.
Learning 3+ languages sounds like a lot of work. Colonizing the entire world so that you never have to learn a second language seems like the smarter move if you ask me 🧐
I remember back in high school there was this Danish foreign exchange student one year, and she would not shut up about how this or that was better in Denmark.
Those kind of people exist anywhere, that isn’t tied to any nationality. Guess it stemms from insecurities and chasing some weird need to feel superior about something.
The average Dane is firmly convinced that Denmark is the most perfect place on earth, a paradise that the rest of the world can only dream of. It follows that any reasonable person who’s not already a Dane must have a desire to become one. If they don’t, there must either be something wrong with them or they simply haven’t heard enough about how good Denmark is.
The upper class in Denmark are just as big piss babies about paying their taxes as they are anywhere else. Ordinary Danes might like to say they’re happy to pay taxes but in reality few of them would pass the opportunity to have their car fixed off the books or to buy beer in Germany to avoid the Danish alcohol tax.
Well in fairness if you came to America and saw what a depraved, decaying shithole it is after being raised on a diet of airbrushed American media you’d probably be appalled, too.
I can’t count how many stories I’ve heard of people visiting from civilized parts of the world and breaking down crying in the street when they see how American’s treat homeless people.
Modern neo-nazis and white supremacists just don’t really understand that the Nazis from WWII would reject and enslave a majority of them… mainly for having Jewish, Slavic, Roma, or other ethnic groups’ blood.
Turns out post-WWI/WWII economic crises lead to a lot of migration and mixing of groups, who woulda thunk?
The “le 56% face” meme, on both sides of the coin, is just a precursor to the world’s greatest Leopards ate My Face meme.
Thing is, there’s not much American news outside of the US. I live in Canada and have far less news about America than I’d thought there should be given how we are neighbors and partners. Most of the news I used to hear about the USA is from Reddit. And when I visit France (which I do regularly, bring born there), there’s almost nothing about the US there.
Recently though, Trump was also over and it wasn’t pretty. Also when going on Reddit, it’s 80% about US News and content, but not necessarily the best news.
Overall, what bothers me and others is how much patriotic a lot of the Americans seem to be and how great they seem to think they are, even when you hear how bad the society is in terms of healthcare, pension, divided politics, crimes, conspiracy theory, etc.
But everytime I’ve been to the US, I’ve only met great and friendly people and have always appreciated it. You usually hear about the bad parts in the news.
I’m franco-american, living in france, and I regularly get people telling me they’re sorry for insulting me for being american. It’s so ingrained in the culture here to shit on americans it’s something of a knee-jerk reaction. I get it, america’s the hegemon, we’re the big baddy, I just wish that didn’t spill over into a kind of xenophobia that people are so comfortable with they regularly catch themselves being openly insulting to people they call their friends.
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