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A comment on The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages. Parent comment

Re:The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 la... by rob74 on Thursday April 07, 2022 @08:20AM (#30943477)
Sorry if it sounds that way! But if a Washington Post journalist is not embarrassed to not know the word "polyglot", and then describes polyglots as people she has only seen on YouTube, you might jump to that conclusion. Or, from her Spanish-sounding name, you might suspect that she does in fact speak at least two languages, but is trying to hide it in order to appear "normal"?

And I'm not saying that the US has a higher percentage of ignorants than other countries, but being one of the most powerful countries in the world, they are also one of the most (if not the most) self-centered. So, not a higher percentage of ignorance in general, but maybe a higher percentage of ignorance of other languages, cultures etc.

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Re:The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 la... by VincentEvans on Thursday April 07, 2022 @08:34AM (#30943604)
US is probably (I am pretty sure it holds the top spot, but haven’t checked so, “probably”) the most diverse country in the world with people of all kinds of backgrounds, languages, nationalities, and races all living alongside each other. So I am not sure how might one in good faith imagine that they are unused to people speaking multiple languages.
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Re:The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 la... by dahfizz on Thursday April 07, 2022 @09:01AM (#30943860)
The word "polyglot" itself is not a common one. People speaking many languages is very common. The USA is the most diverse country in the world.
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Re:The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 la... by gilleain on Thursday April 07, 2022 @12:16PM (#30946519)
> The USA is the most diverse country in the world.

Is it. I was curious, and the first google hit I came across was:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-dive...

  1. Chad - 0.8514
  2. Cameroon - 0.8426
  3. Nigeria - 0.8306
  4. Togo - 0.8118
  5. Congo (Dem. Republic of) - 0.8111
Not sure what this measure of diversity is, clearly the US is not the top of this list...

For example, in terms of language, Nigeria has 525 languages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria

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Re:The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 la... by VincentEvans on Thursday April 07, 2022 @12:26PM (#30946697)
From your link:

“Index value is the probability of two people selected at random from any one country speaking the same language. 1.0 is most diverse, 0.0 is least diverse.”

I leave the reader to judge for themselves whether that is a good measure to judge diversity as being discussed here or not.

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