[Paratoner]

I never understood this attitude from native speakers towards their own language. I am a fresh NL citizen, and have struggled SO MUCH to assimilate into society largely due to this prevalent mentality of "dutch sux actually, we can all speak english amirite guys??" its so bafflingly self-destructive to your own culture. But go off I guess.

[tverbeure]

You've probably never watched Indiana Jones speak French... I was forced to when staying for 2 weeks in the south of Belgium as part of a French immersion program. It's unbearable.

When I watch an American movie, I want to hear it the way the director intended it to be. I don't want every villain in every movie have the same voice. If I want to hear Dutch in a movie, I watch a Dutch movie. It's not that deep.

The fact that it helps kids learn a different language is a very nice fringe benefit.

I remember watching an English movie with an incorrect subtitle in school when I was 12, well before my first English class. The whole auditorium laughed because everyone caught the error.

[loloquwowndueo]

> I don't want every villain in every movie have the same voice.

Sounds like your problem is with crappy, cheap dubbing, not dubbing in general.

Look at Disney animation for dubbing done right (and more so in the 20th century - these days I’m not so sure).

[tverbeure]

Yeah, because I totally have control over who’s dubbing movies in France.

[pessimizer]

A cartoon is the worst possible example.

[loloquwowndueo]

Tell us more.

[numpad0]

I don't think that generalize to dubs as concept itself, I know for the fact that Japanese dub of Commando(1985)[1] is quite something.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_(1985_film)

[mihaelm]

I didn't understand him that way. It's more that it helps if people can more easily pick up a foreign language, or solidify their skills, along the way through media. Doubly so when it's a lingua franca like English.

Though for you, I understand you might have been peeved if people kept switching to English when you just wanted to practice Dutch.

[rapnie]

Yes, I meant it that way. And yes, Dutch people too easily switch to English when someone they encountered is not very proficient in Dutch. It is a kind of 'helpfulness' which is not so helpful for foreigners who want to learn Dutch, and I agree that more Dutch people should make the effort and not the easy language switch.

[Aaargh20318]

I’m a Dutch native and if it were up to me we’d switch to English. I think it’s dumb that small country like us feels the need to maintain its own language.

It is a massive disadvantage. It means that we’re always late with new stuff because the Dutch market is so small no one wants to make the effort of building Dutch versions.

[embedding-shape]

I'm a native Swede and I've said the same about Swedish to, don't really care if it's Mandarin, English or Spanish, just that as many countries as possible go together and unify under one language. Obviously both for Netherlands and Sweden, English would be the way to go, but imagine if you could learn just 3 languages and speak with 90% of the world's population? I thought globalism would take us there eventually somehow, but seems the pendulum started swinging the other way instead.

[numpad0]

FWIW, Mandarin is not the universal spoken language of China. It's just the lingua franca of China as the region. They actually have something like a dozen major groups of dialects with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.

The place read as Shang-hai in Mandarin is apparently read Zan-he in the local "dialect" spoken there. I think one could say Koln and Cologne sound closer together.

[pessimizer]

Did anyone say that Mandarin is the "universal spoken language" of China? IIRC, >90% of Chinese people speak Mandarin as either a 1st or 2nd language.

I don't think as many did 20 years ago, but China is consciously Mandarinizing, and English has lost its spot as the standard second language with the vastly increasing hostility from the West.

[bluecalm]

Yup, there is a lot of value in having universal language and English is the only one with a chance (in Western world anyway). Imo EU should mandate English as 2nd official language for all business dealings and bureaucracy. Having many languages and obligatory translations is a huge disadvantage we have in comparison to USA (or China).

[Pay08]

Language is the biggest thing that defines culture. Do you want the Netherlands to perform some sort of countrywide assimilation into British or American culture?

[embedding-shape]

> Language is the biggest thing that defines culture

Lots of countries would disagree with this. Do you not think Peru and Spain has distinct cultures for example? Why/why not?

[Pay08]

As you can clearly see, I did not say language was the only thing that defines culture.

Do you think Peruvian culture is closer to Spanish or Swedish culture?

[embedding-shape]

Your second question, "Do you want the Netherlands to perform some sort of countrywide assimilation into British or American culture?", really makes it unclear if you actually realize that language isn't the only thing that defines culture, why would that be a question otherwise?

[Aaargh20318]

Yes, I’m a huge proponent of global unification. It’s ridiculous that we have different cultures, languages and laws based on between which imaginary lines on a map you live.

Countries make no sense to me. Look at the current situation in Iran. Everyone on the planet is affected by the actions of a president we didn’t vote for. Earth should be a single country.

[lentil_soup]

What a sad world where we all have the same culture and language. There's many concepts that don't translate from one language to the next, they form a way of looking at the world. What about foods, and stories and music, nah, sounds terrible.

I also want one big world for all but definitely not a single culture or language

[LinXitoW]

So there's only one single culture in all english speaking countries? A unified language does not in any way imply a boring or "assimilated" culture. Dutch people can still ask their closest friend to Venmo them 2 bucks for the fries they took earlier, germans can still make and drink objectively better beer, and the french can still be black and white and smoking a cigarette. But just in english instead.

[lentil_soup]

OP literally advocated for having a single culture.

And you missed the part I said about how different human concepts don't exist in all languages, do we just not have those? Language is an integral part of different cultures, not the only one, but a pretty big one. Can't believe I'm having to defend this.

[Pay08]

Frankly, this belies a complete lack of understanding of how the world works.

[mihaelm]

Small countries are already doing this through the Internet since so much of the consumed content is in English.

[pdntspa]

It's really not that hard. I lived in NL for a year and assimilated Dutch just about as well as my flatmate (a German who was taking a taking a Dutch language class)

Go out and pay attention to your surroundings. Read everything. Make dutch friends. Spend some time outside the large cities.

Dutch is already like half English just spelled and pronounced way differently.

[rapnie]

It is 'destructive' to Dutch culture if you don't dub a movie in a foreign language? I claim the opposite. Doesn't pretend everything happens in your own culture, feels more like a kind cultural erasure of sorts. There's still more than enough TV content in native language. What I also noticed often in dubbed material is that the dubbed voice has inaccurate translation, subtle reformulations, or skips spoken words entirely, which in more autoritarian countries gives wriggle room to subtle media manipulation. The Dutch get it straight from the horse's mouth at least.