[trust_bt_verify]

I think it really comes down to the proximity to areas that speak that language. I can travel 100s of miles in every direction from my home in the US and only find English speakers. If there was a town that spoke Spanish 50 miles away, I may consider picking it up. Not many Europeans speak Chinese, why do you think that is?

[jameshart]

A coding challenge for someone with more GIS knowledge than I have: use the dataset behind this map https://hub.arcgis.com/maps/847cabe2dfc64f92918f2c282e3cedfb (number of households where Spanish is the primary spoken language by census tract) and see if you can find a location in the United States where you can travel 100s of miles in any direction without encountering a Spanish speaker.

Might be somewhere in Alaska, maybe?

[LorenPechtel]

Yup, why should I learn it? I simply have too few occasions to interact with someone who speaks Spanish but not English that it would have been quite a waste of effort to learn.

[Tomis02]

And yet plenty of Americans travel to Europe. Wouldn't hurt to pick up a few words in a foreign language, no?

[zwieback]

I think part of it is that so many people around the world speak English so if English is your first language it's easier to get around.

[dopidopHN]

But you get the English treatment.

While being polite, lots of people will think of you as a retarded child.

If you travel to Mexico for instance, the difference is staggering between someone with a command of Spanish and someone that speaks English only.

[tayo42]

As an adult it's really hard to pick up a language to be conversational. I tried, it's alot of dedication.

Then I went to Mexico, no one understood me. I guess I have an accent or issues with pronunciation. If I did ask a question, I didn't understand the answer. Everyone just spoke English.

[zwieback]

Now you're making Mexicans sound like dicks, I don't want to believe that is true.