Same experience for me. Once in highschool (at an English speaking school) you could choose to branch off from French and learn either Spanish or Japanese (or all the above) if you wanted to.
Do Americans really not learn any other languages in school? I was under the impression that Spanish lessons were part of the public school system down there. I’m not trying to be rude I’m genuinely asking
That's a really cool idea. The internet has really done a number on local news, maybe a world where your social media infrastructure was run by your local municipality would change that. At minimum, it would give people an interesting way to interact with people in their community.
These are good ideas. Hopefully something like that happens one day. In addition to events it would be nice if there were more in-person groups (eg for a class or local community group) that chose to connect online primarily through the Fediverse. You see that kind of thing happening with Discord. It would be good if we could do something similar here.
Well I think that would depend, right? If you’re from a region of the States where there’s more economic activity with Mexico, then sure it makes more sense to learn Spanish. But there are also areas in the States where you have comparatively more economic activity with Canada, then it makes more sense to learn French.
Can we at least agree that it makes more sense for an American to learn French than Portuguese, contrary to what was suggested earlier in the conversation?
Quebec is one of the most economically active regions in Canada. But we can out that aside for now because, again, Quebec is not the only francophone region in Canada. The province I’m from doesn’t even recognize French as an official language, yet there are people who live here who are born here, are educated here, and work here, and die here, all without ever achieving more that basic English proficiency because they are so immersed in the Francophone subculture here.
So if what you are worried about is legal frameworks, then yes, you don’t need your lawyer to be bilingual to do business with Canada in some cases. But that doesn't diminish the fact that the people who you hope to do business with, and your potential customer base, might not know anything beyond broken English (if they know any English at all).
Quebec is in Canada, it’s also not the only Francophone region in Canada. There are also most certainly major economic zones in Canada where you would need to know French to conduct business. And I assume you could also hire a translator for Spanish, no?
Is Canada not economically relevant to the continent? French is an official language of Canada, on equal footing as English. By law anything sold in Canada must include both English and French labelling, software, instruction manuals etc. For parts of the US that trade a lot with Canada, French is at least as economically relevant as Spanish.
Stuff like this is why Bluesky is more popular than Mastodon. We need to find a way to fix these little quirks if we are serious about growing the fediverse
I think a simple ‘popular’ or ‘trending’ feed wouldn’t need user tracking. Or if it was really needed to be customized maybe users could opt into share what topics they are interested in when they sign up
You could argue that our way of life in wealthy countries is impossible without the exploitation of the third-world. Does that mean we are a higher class of humans? No.
Let’s just strive to be as harmless as possible and leave our grand philosophical ideas about who is better than who aside.
I see thanks for clarifying