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> And this is always a weird thing to me. It's like saying living in Germany sucks because almost nobody speaks Chinese. It's true, yeah, but that burden is on
by LeonidasXIV 7y ago
> And this is always a weird thing to me. It's like saying living in Germany sucks because almost nobody speaks Chinese. It's true, yeah, but that burden is on you, not them.
It is not about complaining that people in X don't speak Y, but rather English which, for better or worse has become a de-facto universal second language for people to communicate with. In Germany maybe a bit less but the only people not speaking English in Scandinavia are younger kids. For many Scandinavians it is easier to communicate across borders in English than in their respective languages (which are pretty similar already).
For comparison in Asia, in Taipei it is possible to communicate somewhat passably with many people in English.
- Kurtz79 7y agoYou can't really compare Scandinavian countries with less than 10 Millions people with one with 1.4 Billions. Most people there have no real reason to learn English: their customers are mostly all Chinese, their business partners are mostly all Chinese, they don't travel outside of China, every possible type of content you could want exists in local language... Even in Western countries like France, Spain or Italy, English is not so widely spoken, even if there is a much larger influx of people from other countries.
- fiblye 7y agoChina is a massive country. The vast majority of people have no need or desire to leave, so they have no reason to bother learning the language spoken primarily on other continents who they’ll never really interact with. America neighbors Mexico and has loads of immigrants, but most Americans have made zero effort to learn Spanish despite there being clear and immediate uses everyday. And honestly, if they don’t want to, that shouldn’t be a problem.