• spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    the impression I get is that they’re pretending not to understand, but they do, they just don’t give a flying fuck what other people think of them because everyone keeps buying their cheese, wine, and fashion so they’re busy counting money, getting laid, and smoking like chimneys lol

    • Wander@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Historically they think, or at least seem to think, learning English is beneath them. In fact doing anything not French is beneath them. Then they act like wankers and that’s why everyone hates them.

      English is the dominate language and the Chinese even accepted it before the French. At this point the youth have sort of given up and end up consuming a lot of media and internet in English so it’s way better. Also the lingua franca of Europe is English so they got to learn it just to speak to everyone else, but they don’t really and as such have probably the worst english is western Europe and even most of Europe in general.

      • mabeledo@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        While I get your point, it’s hard to argue that English is the lingua Franca in Europe, since there are more native French speakers than English.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Lingua franca isn’t about native speakers, and if anything it’s about second language speakers. Mandarin has the most global native speakers, but even if we remove it from the running because it has a logographic writing system, number 2 is Spanish. Yet the global lingua franca is English.

          • mabeledo@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Lingua Franca is about how many people you could communicate with across boundaries, thus native speakers play a critical role here.

            “English is the global lingua Franca” is frankly debatable, given the proficiency requirements in many fields. Proof of it is that translators are still ubiquitous in places of business when it comes to negotiations.