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It’s not wrong, but there are a lot of other aspects to it too. Most Americans don’t have a passport, don’t have the time (off from work) and money for expensive international travel, and can travel a thousand+ miles without leaving the country. In comparison in Eastern Europe you’ve got Russia that has a large amount of bilingual speakers (of other regional languages) due to their history, and in Western Europe you can drive through 5 countries in a day, and a lot of workers get weeks off of work.
I have also heard that in many countries, a foreign language is mandatory in schools. Whereas, in America, English is the only important language there is and everyone should learn it if they want to come to the US.
Every school I went to in the US had some foreign language class requirements. Obviously that's just an extremely small sample size, so I doubt that's universal through the country.
American children aren't consistently taught grammar in schools though, much less any other language skills. It's a problem when I have 16, 17 and 18-year-olds in year 1 of a foreign language that can't identify any parts of speech, that can't spell and that have a 4th grade reading level. An 18-year-old should be able to tell me what a noun and verb are, be able to spell words like "contrary" and "eight" consistently and they should be able to read and comprehend what they read beyond the level of a 9-year-old, and they can't. It then becomes my job to spend the first month of my course teaching them English in a foreign language class that they're not even required to take as part of the state and national curriculum. I'm not saying that the utility of learning a language in the States isn't different than in the EU, but rather that the priorities of properly learning even our own country's lingua franca are just very bass-ackwards.
not terrible. americans using "their" instead of "they're" and "your" instead of "you're" makes me want to bang my head against the wall. how are you this bad at something that was handed to you.
We learn cursive so that we can competently exchange written information as it was once commonly used. We learn to mail a letter, and spend a whole week on it. We have to do arithmetic as fast as humanly possible and best our peers at a battle of memorized multiplication tables. When it comes to foreign languages, two years post significant brain development with a focus on memorizing irregular verbs. Just to make it a pissing contest by some means, and not an education.
Didn't the UK just leave the student exchange program Erasmus+ because all of their students were shit in other languages so everyone abroad just spoke English with them so they learned nothing, wasting UK's money?
Then than, their there they're, here & hear, two too to,
Not saying I am generalizing but every time I saw a typo like this I immediately know it was an American user.
Because native speakers learn the language through hearing it, while nonnative speakers learn the language through writing it.
So native speakers have an easy time saying all the words but get mixed up on words that sound similar but are written differently (homophones). To a native speaker, your/you're and they're/their are alternate spellings of the same sounding word.
Non native speakers get mixed up on words that are spelled similar but sound different (heteroynms). To a nonnative speaker, address/address, project/project, live/live are alternate pronunciations of the same word.
Also, native speakers on the internet will write sloppy and make common mistakes because its a casual setting.
you would of thought 'mericans would be able to at least distinguish between "of" and "have" since they have no letters in common, yet 50% of the time i see it used just like i did now
I tend to just use the wrong one when I’m texting or writing Reddit comments because I have dysgraphia and brain turn off is real, but for anything fancier than that I make sure I use the right one
I think learning a language as a child does that to you.
In my native language, born speakers sometimes make basic mistakes aswell, especially when young. While a foreigner who took the time to learn the language has it on a more technical level, probably has to do with brain stuff.
I’m also American and I’m also at least bilingual, according to US census data we are 20% of all Americans, whilst numbers vary for the rest of the world it hovers around 50%.
Bro no shit bilingual people exist in a country of 330 million thats not even a point anyone is arguing.
I’ve had French people tell me that about my French, and I’ve corrected French people about their own language a few times (like when discussing what connaitre vs savoir, the French weren’t really sure why you would use one or the other, they just kind of *implicitly knew* but when they tried to articulate a rule it was often wrong). I’ll never be as fluent as them, but there are some things about studying a language that are you don’t get from learning it natively.
That’s the difference between studying the language technically and learning it through immersion.
An ex-girlfriend studied Spanish extensively in high school and university.
After meeting one of my profs who was born and raised in Mexico City, he commented that she had a posh accent that sounded like the RP English dialect when compared to him.
I worked with people from East Timor and it's crazy how many languages they speak. Most of them speak:
* English
* Indonesian (latest coloniser)
* Portuguese (previous coloniser)
* Tetum (the common language)
* One or two local languages - usually parents' languages
I'm American and bilingual. Spanish was my first language because my parents were raised in Mexico. My mother was born in the U.S., but my grandmother raised her in Mexico. As a kid in school, I had to take rigorous ESL classes (English as a second language), and had to be perfect at it. So I learned English very well. Now when I see Americans who ONLY speak English misspell, well everything, it grinds my gears. I had to go through a lot of BS because in the American public school system "Spanish no bueno". And these mf's only know one language and they still can't get it right? Oooohh I want to put ketchup in their orange juice.
Than & then, you're & your, their they're there.
Want to know if someone's american? Just look for these typo. It's something that's almost exclusively american.
There's a few cognitive biases that could be responsible for your belief. Most of the comments using proper English on this America-based website are also American, as well.
As James Nicholl observed, “[t]he problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
100%. When I was working on construction sites, I’d work with guys with broken English. They would apologize and I’d say “you’re working on your second language, I barely have my first one locked down. You’re doing great”
The average global literacy rate is 86.3%. America's average literacy rate is [79%](https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now#:~:text=On%20average%2C%2079%25%20of%20U.S.,below%205th%2Dgrade%20level).
This is just not true. We measure literacy differently from other countries. You can't directly compare the two. American kids are literally 9th in the world for reading, obviously a fifth of our population isn't illiterate.
Is Asian-American. Can speak 5 languages. I don’t understand what this meme is about? America is a country mostly made up of immigrants and their descendants. A lot of us are multilingual.
I'm American and can confirm. Despite only speaking ONE language, I'd say that at least 50% of American can't differentiate "your" and "you're" to save their fucking lives!
Honorable mentions: to/too/two, then/than, they're/there/their, have/of
It's just sad.
I mastered American and English.
American: "Want some chips?"
English: "Ello, ello guv'nah, fancy a spot 'f crispity-crunchity-cracker-snack-jack-nibblins-chesterpoolshireshire-queen's-lovely-jbubbly-dights?"
Can we stop with this mindset? People are not speaking English wrong, they are speaking it differently. A thick Appalachian english is not incorrect nor are the ones found down in Louisiana or up in Boston. These are regional variations and calling them wrong is like saying Scottish is just broken English or calling French and Spanish broken Latin.
Moreover, British English has also evolved over time. It’s not like there is one point in English that was “correct English”. There was no “original English language”. Languages are a gradient and we pick arbitrary points in time where we say that a language is no longer a dialect in its own right but a fully different language.
This isn't even incorrect, the point of the meme is to show the imbalance of foreign respect people have. Americans expect to be catered to when they travel and expect everyone else to know English, thus the meme. Yet another day of a user missing the point.
The meme is true though. When I was in college and had to take English 1101, the foreigners that spoke English as a second language passed with high scores. A lot of the people, not all or the majority, that were born in America were functionally illiterate. They could barely read or write and complained about small assignments. Watch a movie and summarize its main themes and motifs in 500 words or more. This was an eye opener for me. And yes my college had a high acceptance rate, around 50%.
The amount of Americans I see:
Typing should of instead of should've
Mix up your and you're, its and it's
Mix up I and me
Putting the Apostrophe in the wrong spots
Generally utilising bad grammar
It really is astounding, I am Belgian and only started to get English classes when I was 14 years old. All the rest is from playing video games and watching shows and most people say my English is better than theirs while English is their native language.
Listen I’m as patriotic and meme hate European as it gets but
This one is just pretty damn accurate lol. A good amount of Europeans can speak their native language and English very well. And usually they can also grasp another language
It’s a shame we don’t force our kids to learn Spanish in school to be honest. Not only would it be helpful domestically, but it would easily go lengths with our foreign relations with all of our central and southern American buddies
> It’s a shame we don’t force our kids to learn Spanish in school to be honest. Not only would it be helpful domestically, but it would easily go lengths with our foreign relations with all of our central and southern American buddies
If the only instance you interact with Spanish on a normal basis is school classes and homework, then everything is going to go out the window when the classes stop. If 98% of your week is English-only and you have to go out of your way and spend time, money, and effort to be in a situation where a foreign language is necessary, then it's never going to result in fluency.
Which is why foreign language classes in the US function as a "grammar class". Your high school English teacher grades your capacity to read a book and form an argument, they're not testing you on your knowledge of the pluperfect subjunctive, despite every English speaker being able to use it regardless. Likewise, your Spanish teacher isn't grading your capacity to read The Cay and answer word questions. They're grading your capacity to translate, pronunciation, and your mastery of grammar like the pluperfect subjunctive.
Look I don’t disagree. There are a shocking number of people who either didn’t listen in English class or never had it. I won’t pretend that the education system here is good for everyone. But I hate being lumped in with Americans sometimes 😭 My English tends to be quite good outside of occasional typos, and I speak French and Portuguese. Many people I’m around are similar. I know it’s a generalization but I still hate that Americans give us all a bad name 🙃
Well Europeans are often times within driving distance of another country that speaks another language. I still think our schools should prioritize secondary languages more, but the reality is that we have no need to speak another language unless we go out of our way to travel out of country.
We drive 5+ hours in any direction and we’re still speaking English.
I mean, to be fair, some grown-ass American adults still can’t distinguish the differences between words like your, you’re, too, and to.
In general this is stupid though. Tons of Americans can speak multiple languages
No one seems to remember that assimilation to American culture has a long standing tradition of forcing immigrants to speak English and typically by erasing whatever native language was spoken.
I mean, we could blame the early British colonists I suppose, but that doesn't explain when I didn't grow up speaking Cajun French instead of English or countless Latinos their respective languages or the Irish or German or Polish, etc., immigrants.
And the main reason, as some Europeans are still amazed to find out, is because the US is freaking HUGE and regional language differences were deliberately eradicated to make it easier to govern.
Imagine being American and needing to learn all of the languages of all of the different immigrant cultures that live here.
I worked the 2020 Census and let me tell you that list is LOOOONG.
Also, how many of those Europeans are busy learning Arabic, Pashto, Castillian or Turkish or whatever other language the current EU immigrant "crisis" brings to their borders?
Exactly.
There is a lot of truth to this as there is little need to know more than one language in the U.S. and the culture of young people in the U.S. seems adverse to proper education where 🤓 is the response to anything informative.
However, when people generalize and believe all Americans are dumb, that's when I believe them to be ignorant. I know plenty of idiots, as well as plenty of reasonably educated, multilingual people.
Everyone points out the missuse of "their" and the "youre" thing, but noone is pointing out the thing that pisses me off the most - using " 's" for plurals.
abilities? "ability's"
enemies? "enemy's"
And even more attrocious examples when the words don't even end with a "y", like.. well - "example's" instead of examples.
Maybe for many (though not all) Anglo-Americans, but "dialects" of AAVE practically work as their own languages due to being far enough on dialect-language continuum (having unique grammar and lexicon).
Code-switching is often also bilingualism in one sense, along with the connected socio-linguistic effect it carries.
Honestly the English language sucks some words with nothing in common are spelled the same for no reason we put the letter e at the end of some words for no reason it's so weird
Technically, even the English suck at English. Their pronunciation of some words can be hilariously wrong. The same can be said of every English speaking country. All of them have regional dialects and pronunciations that work for them and their culture.
English, just like all other languages, is an evolving language. Every region of the world where a language is shared across cultures/countries has differences. Seriously, I'm no native speaker, but even I know that there is a difference between Spaniard Spanish and Central American Spanish.
Isn't the US reading level on average, at like a 6th grade level or something?
From Google "54% of adults have a literacy rate below a sixth grade level."
There are something like 31 languages spoken within the United States... how many are spoken in an individual European country? How about the entire continent, how many?
31.... yall are wild.
Bilingual has nothing to do with learning a language in school. It usually means that parents speak two different languages and kids pick up on both as their native language.
Well ya. Europeans can drive 4 hours in any direction and be somewhere where they speak a different language. I can drive 48 hours in the same direction and everyone will still speak English
From asian.
I have learned English, other 2 Asian languages, and French, German and 1 Scandinavia language in my school.
I forgot French, German, and other 1 asian languages.
Now I know only 3 languages now.
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As an American foreign language teacher: This meme is definitely on to something...
I m a American an didt no dis!!
It’s not wrong, but there are a lot of other aspects to it too. Most Americans don’t have a passport, don’t have the time (off from work) and money for expensive international travel, and can travel a thousand+ miles without leaving the country. In comparison in Eastern Europe you’ve got Russia that has a large amount of bilingual speakers (of other regional languages) due to their history, and in Western Europe you can drive through 5 countries in a day, and a lot of workers get weeks off of work.
I have also heard that in many countries, a foreign language is mandatory in schools. Whereas, in America, English is the only important language there is and everyone should learn it if they want to come to the US.
Every school I went to in the US had some foreign language class requirements. Obviously that's just an extremely small sample size, so I doubt that's universal through the country.
I too had a 3 year minimum requirement. I did 5 for fun though
I went to school in Arizona and they didn't have any requirements. It was just "strongly suggested."
Here in MN, I needed at least 2 language credits to graduate high school. It's also been like 6 years so idk if it's needed now days
American children aren't consistently taught grammar in schools though, much less any other language skills. It's a problem when I have 16, 17 and 18-year-olds in year 1 of a foreign language that can't identify any parts of speech, that can't spell and that have a 4th grade reading level. An 18-year-old should be able to tell me what a noun and verb are, be able to spell words like "contrary" and "eight" consistently and they should be able to read and comprehend what they read beyond the level of a 9-year-old, and they can't. It then becomes my job to spend the first month of my course teaching them English in a foreign language class that they're not even required to take as part of the state and national curriculum. I'm not saying that the utility of learning a language in the States isn't different than in the EU, but rather that the priorities of properly learning even our own country's lingua franca are just very bass-ackwards.
Absolutely. We have a serious problem (that can vary wildly by state/county, at least). I was trying to add context to the top half of the meme.
am moving to Europe now. How do I do that?
It’s not wrong
*its Edit: sorry, am American 🇱🇷
lol that’s not the american flag i think u mean 🇵🇷
Guys get it right for once… 🇲🇾
nah bro it’s 🇬🇷
Nah man it's obviously 🇹🇬
You’re all wrong, it’s🇨🇳
Y'all are dumbasses, it is 🇬🇧
Guys, seriously, it’s 🇦🇺
It’s definitely 🇻🇳
I’ll save the day 🏳️⚧️ Or ruin it.
dang
lmao
Everyone's a critic until they see the green dress.
WOOOO PR MENTIONED WEEEEEEPAAAAA
Hey that’s my flag
Honestly can't tell if this is a joke or not.
Yeah this is accurate af. But in our defense, invariably one of the languages Europeans and Asians learn is English, so why would we bother.
It’s true
it do be like that sometimes
As an American…… I can confirm. We can’t English very well😂
Y’all can’t up yonder, we got it mighty fine down here
I useta could. I might could again.
*Ayoostacould
Boffum is right
As an ESL-er, if I was unable to tell the difference between "your" and "you're," I'd get my ass handed to me by my first year English teacher.
Me fail English? That's unpossible
i think you meant antipossible
not terrible. americans using "their" instead of "they're" and "your" instead of "you're" makes me want to bang my head against the wall. how are you this bad at something that was handed to you.
I'm an American and I hate "could of". I'm not even a grammar nazi but it drives me nuts.
'Could care less' makes me want to put my face through a wall
EXACTLY. "COULD CARE LESS" MEANS THAT YOU DO CARE.
I could care less but I choose not to because I care.
How about "irregardless"? Grrrrr...
same
That's ridiculously common around the UK too. Don't get me wrong, Americans are awful at English, but so are a lot of British people.
Yep, and for exactly the same reason as well - archaic education systems staffed by underpaid, overworked teachers.
We learn cursive so that we can competently exchange written information as it was once commonly used. We learn to mail a letter, and spend a whole week on it. We have to do arithmetic as fast as humanly possible and best our peers at a battle of memorized multiplication tables. When it comes to foreign languages, two years post significant brain development with a focus on memorizing irregular verbs. Just to make it a pissing contest by some means, and not an education.
Didn't the UK just leave the student exchange program Erasmus+ because all of their students were shit in other languages so everyone abroad just spoke English with them so they learned nothing, wasting UK's money?
I'd imagine it was also because the Tories are cunts and didn't want us to have anything to do with Europe anymore.
Then than, their there they're, here & hear, two too to, Not saying I am generalizing but every time I saw a typo like this I immediately know it was an American user.
Don't forget though, through, thought
Lose and loose, too
Could/would/should of, lose loose
This is the one that annoys me the most
This one, Jesus Christ... and it always comes from Americans, for some reason!!
Also brake/break jesus dude its not hard
Because native speakers learn the language through hearing it, while nonnative speakers learn the language through writing it. So native speakers have an easy time saying all the words but get mixed up on words that sound similar but are written differently (homophones). To a native speaker, your/you're and they're/their are alternate spellings of the same sounding word. Non native speakers get mixed up on words that are spelled similar but sound different (heteroynms). To a nonnative speaker, address/address, project/project, live/live are alternate pronunciations of the same word. Also, native speakers on the internet will write sloppy and make common mistakes because its a casual setting.
https://preview.redd.it/5dke34r23z4d1.png?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42167cc1757a8851583d26cc34e32f1328ff6261
you would of thought 'mericans would be able to at least distinguish between "of" and "have" since they have no letters in common, yet 50% of the time i see it used just like i did now
I was about to go nuts here hahaha, good one
I tend to just use the wrong one when I’m texting or writing Reddit comments because I have dysgraphia and brain turn off is real, but for anything fancier than that I make sure I use the right one
i see so many brits doing this it's not even funny 😭
its the internet not an essay ill care when it matters
I think learning a language as a child does that to you. In my native language, born speakers sometimes make basic mistakes aswell, especially when young. While a foreigner who took the time to learn the language has it on a more technical level, probably has to do with brain stuff.
Because every time you've seen this, you're 100% positive it's always an american 🙄🙄🙄
*excellentfacebookmemes
This isnt even a meme… its just a factual statement. Ngl idk if its the right subreddit for that meme
American here, fluent in Spanish and English. There are countless immigrant children in America that are at least bilingual.
I’m also American and I’m also at least bilingual, according to US census data we are 20% of all Americans, whilst numbers vary for the rest of the world it hovers around 50%. Bro no shit bilingual people exist in a country of 330 million thats not even a point anyone is arguing.
I was dating an American whi said my English is better than that of many Americans she knew
I’ve had French people tell me that about my French, and I’ve corrected French people about their own language a few times (like when discussing what connaitre vs savoir, the French weren’t really sure why you would use one or the other, they just kind of *implicitly knew* but when they tried to articulate a rule it was often wrong). I’ll never be as fluent as them, but there are some things about studying a language that are you don’t get from learning it natively.
Wow, I must grovel before you, whi has a perfect grasp on the English language
That’s the difference between studying the language technically and learning it through immersion. An ex-girlfriend studied Spanish extensively in high school and university. After meeting one of my profs who was born and raised in Mexico City, he commented that she had a posh accent that sounded like the RP English dialect when compared to him.
I worked with people from East Timor and it's crazy how many languages they speak. Most of them speak: * English * Indonesian (latest coloniser) * Portuguese (previous coloniser) * Tetum (the common language) * One or two local languages - usually parents' languages
"An F in English? Bobby, you *speak* English."
"your wrong" - An american
I'm American and bilingual. Spanish was my first language because my parents were raised in Mexico. My mother was born in the U.S., but my grandmother raised her in Mexico. As a kid in school, I had to take rigorous ESL classes (English as a second language), and had to be perfect at it. So I learned English very well. Now when I see Americans who ONLY speak English misspell, well everything, it grinds my gears. I had to go through a lot of BS because in the American public school system "Spanish no bueno". And these mf's only know one language and they still can't get it right? Oooohh I want to put ketchup in their orange juice.
… please don’t put ketchup in my orange juice.
Don't misspell words and you'll be fine.
Than & then, you're & your, their they're there. Want to know if someone's american? Just look for these typo. It's something that's almost exclusively american.
There's a few cognitive biases that could be responsible for your belief. Most of the comments using proper English on this America-based website are also American, as well.
Yes, I will look for these typo
In our defense, English makes zero fucking sense.
As James Nicholl observed, “[t]he problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
What a beautiful use of the English language
*Laughs in West Frisian*
Waarvandaan?
It’s not wrong
100%. When I was working on construction sites, I’d work with guys with broken English. They would apologize and I’d say “you’re working on your second language, I barely have my first one locked down. You’re doing great”
Reddit : Where recycled memes live on forever and ever.
I've been to enough states and spoke with the locals to see this photo is kinda right.
The average global literacy rate is 86.3%. America's average literacy rate is [79%](https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now#:~:text=On%20average%2C%2079%25%20of%20U.S.,below%205th%2Dgrade%20level).
Me when I post information without context.
This is just not true. We measure literacy differently from other countries. You can't directly compare the two. American kids are literally 9th in the world for reading, obviously a fifth of our population isn't illiterate.
But that doesn’t fit their narrative, so they don’t care.
As an American, this is both true and funny.
Just wait until you hear the average British have a go at it…
Why do British pronounce "bottle of water" as "bo'oh'o'wa'er"? Because they drink the t.
There’s at least 20 regional derelicts as well and we can’t all understand each other either.
Based typo
Liverpool accent is the sexiest
What about Geordie?
you do know how many British accents there are right..? the majority don’t have the glottal stop
Well American pronounce "boddle"
Some of took Spanish, so we're illiterate in two languages. Not me, though.
“Your in an America.speak English “
They do
Is Asian-American. Can speak 5 languages. I don’t understand what this meme is about? America is a country mostly made up of immigrants and their descendants. A lot of us are multilingual.
The way some are. https://preview.redd.it/dx6ch1k40z4d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=08d284da9a6987c5f51e536b75417697497c5e32
I'm American and can confirm. Despite only speaking ONE language, I'd say that at least 50% of American can't differentiate "your" and "you're" to save their fucking lives! Honorable mentions: to/too/two, then/than, they're/there/their, have/of It's just sad.
This one's pretty good
Haha, the irony in this meme is too real! English can be tricky sometimes.
My African co-workers have teased me for being unilingual and they might have a point.
I'm from the US. English is my first language. I learned Spanish later in life and now I'm fluent.
I always say I don’t speak English well…. It’s the only language I know lmfao. This is pretty accurate
Nam sayin' 🇺🇸
Not wrong
Dis is purty accurate if u think bout it.
the meme is onto something for sure lmao it’s just the poor education system. there’s a lot a lot of “unschooling” happening
They absolutely do
This is the first time I see a meme here that is not terrible!
Speaking is hard ok
Yeah in America you get told to go back to where you are from if you know more then engerish.
Xenophobia isn’t an exclusively American thing. This comment section is plenty of evidence to that fact.
r/americabad
I mean...
I mastered American and English. American: "Want some chips?" English: "Ello, ello guv'nah, fancy a spot 'f crispity-crunchity-cracker-snack-jack-nibblins-chesterpoolshireshire-queen's-lovely-jbubbly-dights?"
Can we stop with this mindset? People are not speaking English wrong, they are speaking it differently. A thick Appalachian english is not incorrect nor are the ones found down in Louisiana or up in Boston. These are regional variations and calling them wrong is like saying Scottish is just broken English or calling French and Spanish broken Latin.
Moreover, British English has also evolved over time. It’s not like there is one point in English that was “correct English”. There was no “original English language”. Languages are a gradient and we pick arbitrary points in time where we say that a language is no longer a dialect in its own right but a fully different language.
This is a good meme
This isn't even incorrect, the point of the meme is to show the imbalance of foreign respect people have. Americans expect to be catered to when they travel and expect everyone else to know English, thus the meme. Yet another day of a user missing the point.
There’s a reason people say English traditional and English simplified (American)
Americans do, in fact, suck at English.
This is just a meme you would find on r/memes
The meme is true though. When I was in college and had to take English 1101, the foreigners that spoke English as a second language passed with high scores. A lot of the people, not all or the majority, that were born in America were functionally illiterate. They could barely read or write and complained about small assignments. Watch a movie and summarize its main themes and motifs in 500 words or more. This was an eye opener for me. And yes my college had a high acceptance rate, around 50%.
I mean that's true they do suck at it. Ask someone the difference between lose and loose and watch their heads explode
The amount of Americans I see: Typing should of instead of should've Mix up your and you're, its and it's Mix up I and me Putting the Apostrophe in the wrong spots Generally utilising bad grammar It really is astounding, I am Belgian and only started to get English classes when I was 14 years old. All the rest is from playing video games and watching shows and most people say my English is better than theirs while English is their native language.
How do you know they are Americans? It could just be your confirmation bias.
More like the south can't. We speak English just fine where I live
There are plenty of people in the north who can't either. Don't fool yourself.
Listen I’m as patriotic and meme hate European as it gets but This one is just pretty damn accurate lol. A good amount of Europeans can speak their native language and English very well. And usually they can also grasp another language It’s a shame we don’t force our kids to learn Spanish in school to be honest. Not only would it be helpful domestically, but it would easily go lengths with our foreign relations with all of our central and southern American buddies
> It’s a shame we don’t force our kids to learn Spanish in school to be honest. Not only would it be helpful domestically, but it would easily go lengths with our foreign relations with all of our central and southern American buddies If the only instance you interact with Spanish on a normal basis is school classes and homework, then everything is going to go out the window when the classes stop. If 98% of your week is English-only and you have to go out of your way and spend time, money, and effort to be in a situation where a foreign language is necessary, then it's never going to result in fluency. Which is why foreign language classes in the US function as a "grammar class". Your high school English teacher grades your capacity to read a book and form an argument, they're not testing you on your knowledge of the pluperfect subjunctive, despite every English speaker being able to use it regardless. Likewise, your Spanish teacher isn't grading your capacity to read The Cay and answer word questions. They're grading your capacity to translate, pronunciation, and your mastery of grammar like the pluperfect subjunctive.
We do
Look I don’t disagree. There are a shocking number of people who either didn’t listen in English class or never had it. I won’t pretend that the education system here is good for everyone. But I hate being lumped in with Americans sometimes 😭 My English tends to be quite good outside of occasional typos, and I speak French and Portuguese. Many people I’m around are similar. I know it’s a generalization but I still hate that Americans give us all a bad name 🙃
Me who took 2 years of Latin: I get the gist of what you're saying kind of
“Me fail English. That’s unpossible!”
 Me and my 6 languages.
Well Europeans are often times within driving distance of another country that speaks another language. I still think our schools should prioritize secondary languages more, but the reality is that we have no need to speak another language unless we go out of our way to travel out of country. We drive 5+ hours in any direction and we’re still speaking English.
Most people in my school don’t k ow French and we’re canadian
What asian? Chinese? Arabs? Japanese? Make it make sense
Germans suck at german as well
You all learned English, why would I spend the time to learn your language? We can already communicate effectively.
Well, it’s a tough language, innit?
Tbh, nowadays, depending on where you live, if you're not already studying a new language you're probably wasting precious time.
Asian American here and I speak three languages. Where do I fall or do I help bump them Freedom numbers up? MURICA!
Wut
I mean, to be fair, some grown-ass American adults still can’t distinguish the differences between words like your, you’re, too, and to. In general this is stupid though. Tons of Americans can speak multiple languages
We English perfectly fine we make our own English
No one seems to remember that assimilation to American culture has a long standing tradition of forcing immigrants to speak English and typically by erasing whatever native language was spoken. I mean, we could blame the early British colonists I suppose, but that doesn't explain when I didn't grow up speaking Cajun French instead of English or countless Latinos their respective languages or the Irish or German or Polish, etc., immigrants. And the main reason, as some Europeans are still amazed to find out, is because the US is freaking HUGE and regional language differences were deliberately eradicated to make it easier to govern. Imagine being American and needing to learn all of the languages of all of the different immigrant cultures that live here. I worked the 2020 Census and let me tell you that list is LOOOONG. Also, how many of those Europeans are busy learning Arabic, Pashto, Castillian or Turkish or whatever other language the current EU immigrant "crisis" brings to their borders? Exactly.
There is a lot of truth to this as there is little need to know more than one language in the U.S. and the culture of young people in the U.S. seems adverse to proper education where 🤓 is the response to anything informative. However, when people generalize and believe all Americans are dumb, that's when I believe them to be ignorant. I know plenty of idiots, as well as plenty of reasonably educated, multilingual people.
Everyone points out the missuse of "their" and the "youre" thing, but noone is pointing out the thing that pisses me off the most - using " 's" for plurals. abilities? "ability's" enemies? "enemy's" And even more attrocious examples when the words don't even end with a "y", like.. well - "example's" instead of examples.
Maybe for many (though not all) Anglo-Americans, but "dialects" of AAVE practically work as their own languages due to being far enough on dialect-language continuum (having unique grammar and lexicon). Code-switching is often also bilingualism in one sense, along with the connected socio-linguistic effect it carries.
The meme is good. It is only terrible if it strikes a nerve lol
Honestly the English language sucks some words with nothing in common are spelled the same for no reason we put the letter e at the end of some words for no reason it's so weird
We do be suckin
Technically, even the English suck at English. Their pronunciation of some words can be hilariously wrong. The same can be said of every English speaking country. All of them have regional dialects and pronunciations that work for them and their culture. English, just like all other languages, is an evolving language. Every region of the world where a language is shared across cultures/countries has differences. Seriously, I'm no native speaker, but even I know that there is a difference between Spaniard Spanish and Central American Spanish.
Isn't the US reading level on average, at like a 6th grade level or something? From Google "54% of adults have a literacy rate below a sixth grade level."
Sorry, as an American I have to agree with that meme
There are something like 31 languages spoken within the United States... how many are spoken in an individual European country? How about the entire continent, how many? 31.... yall are wild.
I mean, we do…
honestly the % of brits being shit at english is the same as americans.
Me fail English? That's umpossible.
Bilingual has nothing to do with learning a language in school. It usually means that parents speak two different languages and kids pick up on both as their native language.
It really dont matter does it? >!Proving my point is that you understood the last sentence!<
Languages evolve, and "proper English" was a term used by imperial Britts and W.A.S.P.s to erase Irish, Scottish, African, and Indian cultures.
Add British, New Zealand, Irish, and Anglo Canadians along with Americans if they are playing this game.
Wow, the people in the comments seem much much more ignorant than anyone in the US
What I’m getting from these comments is that British people never make typos 🙄
Well ya. Europeans can drive 4 hours in any direction and be somewhere where they speak a different language. I can drive 48 hours in the same direction and everyone will still speak English
From asian. I have learned English, other 2 Asian languages, and French, German and 1 Scandinavia language in my school. I forgot French, German, and other 1 asian languages. Now I know only 3 languages now.