Re:Patrick Collison's Questions
by SpicyLemonZest on Monday August 24, 2020 @02:21AM
(#24257966)
In the city I grew up in, official notices were routinely made in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and I regularly encountered people speaking Korean and Chinese as well. Even my grandma's rural town, with a population of under 5,000 and an hour's drive to the closest city, has people and restaurants representing four or five different nationalities. If you're perceiving the US as a country where everyone only speaks English and only eats at McDonalds, that's not accurate.
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Re:Patrick Collison's Questions
by 082349872349872 on Monday August 24, 2020 @04:00AM
(#24258400)
Aha, things have improved since last century. When in California I did use spanish as well as english, and in Louisiana french as well as english — but back then the concept of "melting pot" was still current, so one of these languages was clearly the prestige dialect.
Looking at the current cabinet, I'm sure if I scrolled enough in @SecElaineChao I could find some chinese. Sorry for my outdated impression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Donald_Trump#Announ...
(For comparison, our excomm may have 4 germanophones, 2 francophones, and 1 italophone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)#...
but we utterly lack any mother-tongue sinophones. And although our current president, @s_sommaruga, has some romanche in her feed, she uses much more english.)