I saw a meme earlier with a man looking directly at the camera and the words printed: 

Ok. So? 

Is he suggesting he is morally superior because of this? It doesn’t say what his native language is… I mean it might be kind of funny if his only language is English too…. 

But presumably, the point of the meme is to shame English-only speakers with this point: English is a language he learned so he could communicate with English speakers, who only speak English. 

But again, so what? Did he learn Albanian because it’s the only language Albanian-only speakers know? If not, why not? The obvious question is: would he need to speak Albanian for some reason? Probably not.  

Did English speakers demand that he learn English so they could speak with him? Probably not. 

Why would he bother learning English? Probably because English has become such an important language for trade and commerce worldwide. That fact is not the fault of native English speakers. 

Let’s face it, the reason he probably learned to speak English was because it was a benefit for him to do so. I get it, if he is from the Czech Republic, it would be much more convenient if the world’s business were conducted in Czech, and everyone would have to learn Czech to get along better. But it just so happens that the international language is English.  

Nobody is forcing the gentlemen to speak English and I certainly don’t need to speak with him. If he learns English to speak with me, it is undoubtedly what he considers his best interest. Why he considers himself morally superior over that fact isn’t clear. If he were a native English speaker, would he bother learning another language?  

I will also add that as someone who does dabble in other languages, it’s very common that even when I try to speak those languages to native speakers, most, if they have more fluency in English than I do in their language, will ignore my attempts to speak their language and answer me back in English. OK, that tells me they aren’t interested in listening while I try to speak in their language. They would prefer to speak English over listening to me try to speak their language. So am I still morally inferior because they don’t want to listen to me even try? 

Of course he didn’t say he considers himself morally superior, so I can’t be sure that that is his point. But the statement- We are not the same, infers it. On the face of it, one could claim otherwise. Simply saying we aren’t the same just literally means we aren’t the same. But that’s so obvious it doesn’t need any qualifiers. I’m not “the same” as anybody else, so clearly I’m not the same as him. And if that’s all he wanted to say, then leave out the two sentences about languages and just say: We are not the same. 

But the two sentences about language and the conclusion that we are not the same implies that he considers himself superior. 

Again, let’s not skip over a possibility. A bilingual person IS superior over a monolingual person in one respect; they speak more languages. So without trying to beat a dead horse here, if the metric is languages spoken, two is more than one, there ya go, he’s better. 

But the combination of the capital letters on the second YOU seems to imply that he is put out by the fact that English-only speakers speak only English because in order to speak with them, HE must learn and speak English too. This extra effort of his- to be the bigger person in order to exchange information- makes him a morally superior person. 

I may be missing something here, not sure. But at least as far as I can see, this is what the meme is saying. 

As someone who likes other languages and has put effort into learning other languages, I’m not knocking other languages. But I don’t see the particular point of this meme other than being sore about the fact that English has become prominent in much of the world.

I’ll also add that I have family in Italy, many of whom can’t speak more than Italian. I don’t fault them for growing up in a place and speaking that language.