Heard someone say this on reddit many years ago after someone was being a wise ass about their English which was obviously second or third language

You speak English because it's the only language you know; I speak English because it's the only language you know We are not the same

Yeah I hung out with a bunch of Germans who were really good English speakers but constantly were self critical of their English skills. They were beating my German skills by a landslide even at their worst moments.

But America dumbo!

And perhaps Brits and Canadians. I’m not sure about their visit numbers though.

Or anybody in europe who probably speaks english as thats the "world language"

I’m sawwry, I don’t speak ‘at squeaky squacky, beep boop shit. Why don’t you try talking like an American?! You’re in American space space!

It's not necessarily just for Americans. English is the most spoken language in the world when you include people's second language. That German tourist probably isn't going to know Thai and that Thai cafe probably isn't going to know German, but they can muddle though with English.

As a developer in a non English speaking country, in the last decade having English in your resume has moved from nice-to-have to mandatory, now the nice to have is having a third one.

One random thought I had about this the other day was that I feel sort of bad for the British, Irish, Americans and Australians. Well, the monolingual ones.

Anytime they go abroad, it's like "oh they didn't even bother to learn the language", but then when we who didn't grow up on English do, we've already learned at least English, so not knowing the local language is somehow more understandable. Or perhaps people don't feel that way, but it's just a thought I had. Like it feels less polite when a native English speaker just addresses someone in English in a foreign country, but if a non-English speaker asks "do you speak English" with broken English, it's much more... sympathetic.

I'm just babling nevermind me.

I do agree with you though and can't really understand people in my country who still say they can't speak English. I mean, people who still use the internet and consume media that's in English. I don't get it. Language acquisition gets worse sure, but it's never gone away from me at least. I watch one season of some show in a language I don't understand and I already start picking up the very basics. Nothing I could use, surely, but like my brain is clearly structuring and trying to make sense of the language, so with enough exposition to a language...

I can’t speak Thai but I am not complaining because I’m not an asshole

Because they're the only country with America in their name whereas United States is shared by Mexico

Also in English there's a distinction between North and South America, with the supercontinent being referred to as "The Americas", so America isn't really ambiguous, they're also geologically and environmentally distinct enough that "The Americas" isn't used so much and "New World" is often more relevant to include Australia as another somewhat culturally similar sparsely populated former colonial area.

Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.

There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.

While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.

Why does someone always smugly point this out in these threads?

Because calling anyone else an American is insulting.

Man that's crazy, I speak French with an undertone of a Belgian accent, but pretty close to French general accent (I know every dept has their accent, chill!), but Canadians have an extremely heavy and weird non standard accent compared to other people.

I'd think that this sign is not there because of American tourists. All the Americans I've met while traveling, have acknowledged that English being their native language is a privilege and have been very polite towards people who don't speak English that well. But in Europe English has become the universal language and it's easy to forget that not everyone can speak it as well.