4 ms·

I'm a tourist 4 weeks per year. Excluding any business travel. That's 7.6% of the time. Now, I travel internationally more than most, but it's not out of the or

by bux93 1y ago

I'm a tourist 4 weeks per year. Excluding any business travel. That's 7.6% of the time. Now, I travel internationally more than most, but it's not out of the ordinary and it's 100x your estimate. Of course, I'm multilingual even if I stay at home. Do we know how many people are multilingual? About half of Europeans speak more than one language. That's hundreds of millions of Youtube users. 22% of Americans for 76 million in the US. That's just numbers from Google's own Gemini (which is doing a bit of a half-assed job). Note that all EU countries except Ireland mandate second language teaching in schools (23 out of 27 mandate at least two foreign languages); you don't need to be an ex-pat, tourist, longterm resident or second generation immigrant to be multilingual. Not taking input from multi-lingual users is not just bad practice from Google, it's actually impressive how they manage to ignore people they probably know and are working with.

wheybags 1y ago
> all EU countries except Ireland mandate second language teaching in schools Ireland does mandate second language teaching in schools, it's just not a foreign language, it's Irish (separate language, not a dialect of English). And it's taught atrociously badly. The vast majority of graduates, after about 13 years of mandatory Irish classes, cannot functionally speak it.
- amiga386 1y ago
  > separate language, not a dialect of English Of all the languages spoken in the UK and Ireland that argument attracts, I've never heard anyone claim that about Irish - an actual Gaelic language. > The vast majority of graduates, after about 13 years of mandatory Irish classes, cannot functionally speak it. They just need to get out their word book - that's right, their focal leabhair ♫ oh get out your focal leabhair, get out your focal leabhair and we'll have you speaking Irish in a half-an-hour Sea means yes and Níl means no get out your focal leabhair and we'll all have a go ♫ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNZbmrMg7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNZbmrMg7M
  - wheybags 1y ago
    > I've never heard anyone claim that about Irish - an actual Gaelic language. Many people from other parts of the world don't know it exists, so when you say "Irish language", they just think you mean hiberno-english. I've never heard anyone claim it either, just assume, then get confused in conversation until I clarify.
- michaelt 1y ago
  > And it's taught atrociously badly. The vast majority of graduates, after about 13 years of mandatory Irish classes, cannot functionally speak it. I grew up in a country where we had mandatory lessons in a little-used local language imposed on us by politicians. That I learned nothing isn’t the teachers’ fault - they were simply set an impossible task.
- david-gpu 1y ago
  Monolinguals consistently underestimate how hard it is to reach proficiency in another language. The exception to this being being raised in a multilingual home. I don't know what their reasoning is. They can plainly see around them foreigners struggling to speak, but they somehow think that it won't happen to them?
ben_w 1y ago
> Note that all EU countries except Ireland mandate second language teaching in schools (23 out of 27 mandate at least two foreign languages); you don't need to be an ex-pat, tourist, longterm resident or second generation immigrant to be multilingual. Yes, but learned at school doesn't necessarily count for much. I grew up in the UK, secondary school was post-Maastricht so I was in the EU at the time; French was mandatory, but my grasp of the language is still so bad that when I tried to say "I don't speak French" in French in front of a French person, she couldn't tell if I was trying to say "I can" or "I can't". I have pushed myself quite a bit in other languages since school, but I'm also a nerd who likes learning for its own sake. I suspect a lot of people are only just about barely able to function in tourist settings in the languages they learned at school. That said, auto-translation of videos is kinda an existential threat to hosting a language course on YouTube.

by bux93 1y ago

wheybags 1y ago

> all EU countries except Ireland mandate second language teaching in schools Ireland does mandate second language teaching in schools, it's just not a foreign language, it's Irish (separate language, not a dialect of English). And it's taught atrociously badly. The vast majority of graduates, after about 13 years of mandatory Irish classes, cannot functionally speak it.

amiga386 1y ago
> separate language, not a dialect of English Of all the languages spoken in the UK and Ireland that argument attracts, I've never heard anyone claim that about Irish - an actual Gaelic language. > The vast majority of graduates, after about 13 years of mandatory Irish classes, cannot functionally speak it. They just need to get out their word book - that's right, their focal leabhair ♫ oh get out your focal leabhair, get out your focal leabhair and we'll have you speaking Irish in a half-an-hour Sea means yes and Níl means no get out your focal leabhair and we'll all have a go ♫ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNZbmrMg7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNZbmrMg7M
- wheybags 1y ago
  > I've never heard anyone claim that about Irish - an actual Gaelic language. Many people from other parts of the world don't know it exists, so when you say "Irish language", they just think you mean hiberno-english. I've never heard anyone claim it either, just assume, then get confused in conversation until I clarify.
michaelt 1y ago
> And it's taught atrociously badly. The vast majority of graduates, after about 13 years of mandatory Irish classes, cannot functionally speak it. I grew up in a country where we had mandatory lessons in a little-used local language imposed on us by politicians. That I learned nothing isn’t the teachers’ fault - they were simply set an impossible task.
david-gpu 1y ago
Monolinguals consistently underestimate how hard it is to reach proficiency in another language. The exception to this being being raised in a multilingual home. I don't know what their reasoning is. They can plainly see around them foreigners struggling to speak, but they somehow think that it won't happen to them?

ben_w 1y ago

> Note that all EU countries except Ireland mandate second language teaching in schools (23 out of 27 mandate at least two foreign languages); you don't need to be an ex-pat, tourist, longterm resident or second generation immigrant to be multilingual. Yes, but learned at school doesn't necessarily count for much. I grew up in the UK, secondary school was post-Maastricht so I was in the EU at the time; French was mandatory, but my grasp of the language is still so bad that when I tried to say "I don't speak French" in French in front of a French person, she couldn't tell if I was trying to say "I can" or "I can't". I have pushed myself quite a bit in other languages since school, but I'm also a nerd who likes learning for its own sake. I suspect a lot of people are only just about barely able to function in tourist settings in the languages they learned at school. That said, auto-translation of videos is kinda an existential threat to hosting a language course on YouTube.