man i wish second languages were more of a thing for people in the US
ive struggled learning spanish for a while as an adult and i just wish I had went to an immersion school or something as a youngster. even if it doesnt really matter, i think its just so great. great for your community, great for your brain; besides the time i dont see any downsides to learning another language
you might like Russia.. lots of other cowards live there, it's their default state of mind.. you'd fit in.. that's all i'm saying.. i just assumed only a Russian would be out there championing cowardice actively on the internet.. sorry bout that Cali..
where i grew up in burger land, back in the 80s, the public schools were teaching us all spanish in from age 5 to 10. not like true bilingual education, but we had a spanish class once a week. it last about 2 years before the white nationalists–who panic at the idea of working class people easily communicating with each other–got it shut down. between that and some years working with seasonal agricultural workers practicing their english, i am at the comprehension level of an inebriated toddler. i wish i had more opportunities to practice. honestly, the US should have all its signs in english and spanish anyway, but you know the reactionaries would go info a full blown pogrom over even a whiff of that being proposed.
i remember some small business tyrant in florida in the 2000s called up my work one time and wanted me to pass along his complaint to my boss that our phone system had an option to “press ocho for espanol”. he said that our company even offering the option to “those people” was wrong… in FLORIDA… the state with the name that means “land of flowers” in spanish.
Are foreign languages classes in general not mandatory in US schools ?
Here in france-cool every kid will have classes for at least two languages (one for four years, one for two IIRC), sometimes three. Depending on where they go to school the kids will sometimes have a lot of choices (Chinese, Polish, regional languages, etc.) or sometimes only either English, Italian, German, or Spanish.
in secondary school (ages 14-18) it was highly encouraged to take at least 2 years of a foreign language, though american sign language counted. and kids on the “not college” pipeline didn’t have to do that. j’ai trois ans de les cours de francais, but i haven’t had much opportunity to practice or use it conversationally in like the 25 years since.
edit: secondary school offered french, spanish, german or ASL. the private $$$ schools offered mandarin and others.
People on lemmy are taking the blue pill and thinking that the fediverse is wholesome, the fediverse is many things (mostly positive) but saying that we’ve got no assholes is a lie (OP did say that “the whole fediverse is wholesome ❤”)
EDIT: It is still nice here, just not the gold standard and the fediverse has a lot of advantages that have nothing to do with the userbase
That was definitely a good start, based on my own experience. Just keep an eye out for the popular degenerates from there and be ready to block them as well. Blocking their community doesn’t keep them out of the comment sections else where. Especially politics.
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