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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26965 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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Ehhhhhh. I am a digital nomad, from the US and have spent more than half of the past 3 years in either (non-anglophone) Europe or Asia, and really all you need to know today is English.

I speak pretty good German and Spanish, my French and Japanese are ok enough for tourist purposes. Every educated person in Germany and Austria speaks perfect English, the only use I get out of my German is speaking to Turks in Germany and Hungarians/Eastern Europeans, Romanians and Turks in Austria. Spanish is more useful in Spain and probably requisite in central/South America (barring Brazil and a few outliers) but admittedly I haven’t been there so I don’t know. In France you are expected to speak French and English ability is associated with upper classes- so people will be embarrassed if you expect them to speak English, but in response to your point being that French is necessary for important badassery, in my experience anyone important enough in France and broader Europe already speaks English.

In Asia it’s even less required to speak a local language. In most of Asia they will be surprised if you do. Japanese don’t go to Korea and speak Korean, or Japanese, they speak English. Koreans don’t go to Japan and speak Japanese or Korean they speak English. And so on and so forth.

As an aside, a little while ago I was thinking, oh it would be so useful to have a watch that displayed live translations of whatever audio was in my environment or people I was speaking to in English. Then I saw a piece in I think the WSJ saying the new AirPods can translate/interpret people speaking to you in foreign languages. I thought that was cool and useful though I worry most people you speak with will still think you’re being rude for speaking to them with headphones in, plus it won’t talk to them in their language so I think the watch visual interface solution would be better. I also worry about the barrier to integration of cultures being too low. Now every immigrant with $120 (or whatever AirPods cost) can get translation of whatever language they want, giving them an asymmetric advantage over people who aren’t using the technology.

Ehhhhhh. I am a digital nomad, from the US and have spent more than half of the past 3 years in either (non-anglophone) Europe or Asia, and really all you need to know today is English.

How would you say you approach interactions in these cultures? Is it "I am clearly an outsider, but we both know enough English to complete this retail transaction?" Are there any of these cultures where you feel like you understand them enough to finesse? To not pull a three fingers incident?

The point of the languages example is as an expression of mastery.

Hahaha, oh no, I’m nowhere near three fingers level mastery at Japanese or French culture, I probably couldn’t even pass as a New Yorker or a Southerner, as a midwesterner myself. I mean, mastery of a culture to the degree that you avoid the three fingers incident in Inglorious Basterds is nearly impossible, which is the biggest takeaway of that scene for me anyway

Koreans don’t go to Japan and speak Japanese or Korean they speak English.

Agree on the other points but this one actually isn't true. When I was in Japan I actually saw a lot of Korean tourists speaking in Japanese. And there are a surprising number of google reviews by Koreans accusing the local workers of discriminating because they pretend not to understand because of the Korean accent.

I also knew a Korean person who told me that learning Japanese is easy due to the fact that the grammar is quite similar, as well as a large amount of chinese-derived vocabulary(Kango/Hanjaeo). So of any two Asian languages, Japanese and Korean are the most easiest to learn the other. I assume it's like learning French/German, where they are mutually unintelligible, but due to their similarities, there are a ton of people who can speak both.

When briefly in Japan I was surprised how much Japanese wife Chinese wife was able to decipher.

I believe there's a typo here unless you have two wives.

I think his Japanese Wife is the polygamist based on this. Just since she has a Chinese wife doesn't mean @aquota does.

concerning.

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