[romanoderoma]

> English is not about moving to another place but doing business beyond local.

There are "only" 379 million people speaking English as a native language.

But there are 1.2 billion people speaking English as a second language, which means that there are more people speaking English that do not actually speak "proper" English, than people speaking it because they were born with it.

The outcome is that

> About 75% of the world's 1.2 billion English speakers are non-native speakers. However, while non-native speakers often understand each other well in English, many native speakers are bad at making themselves understood by non-native speakers.

> "Often you have a [room] full of people from different countries communicating in English and all understanding each other, and then suddenly the American or Brit walks into the room and nobody can understand them"

[6510]

As a dutch subject I have to agree. When Americans talk about social security and healthcare they seem to attempt to do it (read "fail") from a purely selfish angle. What seems like a complete lack of empathy born out of a selfish culture where no one has your back is really just my linguistic shortcommerings. Jokes aside (not really) Its pretty funny if you think about it. Europe wants to build a cute union that nurtures the citizens into a bunch of weaklings while team America wants their country to be this big hungry monster that hunts you down and eats you. Clearly non of this is right but migrating from the US to the EU would seem the best experience.

[toyg]

Your view of the EU “wants” is laughable.

The EU exists to matter on the global stage in the age of superpowers, to keep alight the flame of European economic imperialism that was being smothered bu US/USSR (and now US/China). It just so happens that most people here think the best way to go about that, without massive societal upheaval, is to guarantee prosperity for all. There is little “cute” about the project, any “cuteness” you might see is the result of strategic positioning.

[dependsontheq]

Mostly it exists so we don’t kill each other -European imperialism is a direct outgrowth of being the most warlike continent for hundreds of years. When they talk about “civil war times” in the history of China ... that’s the whole history of Europe. I have 300 castles around my hometown ... I can find WW2 bombs and Munition from the 30 years war in the forest.

[emteycz]

You severely underestimate Asian warfarers.

[dependsontheq]

So true - and the comparison might not even be possible, but Europe had very small units fighting each other and at the same time there was a feeling of common religion and culture. That is pretty unique and uniquely stupid. So let’s state it a bit differently we are complete idiots and we were mostly governed by 5 families over 1000 years and these 5 families fought each other and burned everything into the ground and then married each other. So to be no longer governed by complete idiots that fight each other mostly for entertainment there is the EU.