Well, I'll tell you even as an American who's lived in a relatively similar country, culturally, in northwestern Europe (Belgium/Netherlands), where they spoke a related language, good luck trying to learn the local language, especially in the Netherlands, as locals will immediately switch to English rather than having the patience to deal with you. I'd imagine this phenomonon is probably the same in lots of other countries, like the Scandinavian ones and others. So it's not even always that Americans and other English speakers don't want to attempt to learn another language, they're just not really enabled to do so in many places. I'm guessing the situation would be much worse with a language like Japanese, which has fairly isolated usage and a much more difficult structure and writing form, for an English speaker, or a speaker of any European language, for that matter.
True. Native English speakers seem to have more flexible listening comprehension and adapt well to others speaking their native tongue poorly. The native speakers of many other languages don’t seem nearly as accommodating or forgiving of mistakes on average.
I one hundred percent agree with that. My foreign language skills are pretty good and I often find myself corrected over the smallest issues when speaking other languages - like the accent on the wrong syllable - that a native English speaker would not likely do with someone speaking our language.
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u/SnooPears5432 ILLINOIS 🏙️💨 2d ago
Well, I'll tell you even as an American who's lived in a relatively similar country, culturally, in northwestern Europe (Belgium/Netherlands), where they spoke a related language, good luck trying to learn the local language, especially in the Netherlands, as locals will immediately switch to English rather than having the patience to deal with you. I'd imagine this phenomonon is probably the same in lots of other countries, like the Scandinavian ones and others. So it's not even always that Americans and other English speakers don't want to attempt to learn another language, they're just not really enabled to do so in many places. I'm guessing the situation would be much worse with a language like Japanese, which has fairly isolated usage and a much more difficult structure and writing form, for an English speaker, or a speaker of any European language, for that matter.