As a black person whose ancestors had their language taken away and forced to speak other languages I could never let that phrase leave my mouth. Not sure how she managed it. Wild.
@@Frank-vy7su And if you could actually read you would have noticed that the very first sentence was "...whose ancestors had their language taken away". The language they speak is English because their ancestors were forced to speak English and English only, meaning their original languages were lost. If you had reading comprehension above the level of a 4th grader you probably would've gotten that.
Every country that exists today was fought over & the winning people= won. NATIVE AMERICANS FOUGHT & KILLED EACH OTHER OVER THE LAND LONG BEFORE WHITE MEN CAME & DEFEATED THEM. So it's only not ok when it's the white men who won? What other countries do you know that pander to the ancestors of the people they defeated hundreds of years ago????
THANK YOU SO MUCH, First it annoys me that many Americans will make arguments like: "go back to your home country" or "speak f*cking English." This is their home as much as it is yours. Second: as a linguist, we need to make an effort to preserve as many languages as possible: with each language death we loose a way of looking at the world and vast amounts of general wisdom.
Yup, all around the world there are languages that are dying. In my country of UK we have Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish. All pretty much dead barring Welsh and it's ashame. Conservation of languages is important and our governments need to do more in protecting our languages!
@quagmirefan420two things can be true... but also where I live the majority of people speak Spanish and yet I don't see many new people to the area making the effort to speak the language of the majority in the area
@quagmirefan420yeah you should learn English but the problem is people say ‘’speak English this is America’’ to non- native speakers who are already fluent in English as a secondary/third language it’s just some American nationalists want the us to be completely monolingual
i once her someone speak Cornish (I believe it was my mothers boyfriens niece (confusing, I know)) and it was beautiful, there are very few who still learn or know languages such as these. @@-._A2._-
It's not "limiting oneself" to want a newcomer to use the language of the place they went to. 🙄 Modern people get guilt-tripped for not respecting the cultures their ancestors rejected and/or erased, but somehow its ok to do the exact same thing to the people here now? 🤨
I also HATE when people insist that speaking English is the only thing you should do. Like??? What about multiculturalism and embracing others? Learning about eachother is important and that’s what prevents prejudice! I love seeing other cultures in America. We have such big cities and so much room for everyone. I love seeing people speaking all different languages and celebrating their heritage. I went to my first Chinese new year celebration this year and it was SO fun and interesting. I’m always excited to learn about new things and customs and I like the idea of being able to speak multiple languages.
@@-KMA- I understand a lot of people speak English HOWEVER I do think people shouldn’t be criticized for enjoying their culture or their native tongue either. We should be more open to learning about one another
in Europe, where the British have tried to wipe out other native languages, they now teach those native languages in schools. this needs to happen in America.. Also, naming the places in their original native language and any new places developed to be given a native name. Its only a small start, but it would be a start. celebrate the tribe whos native land the county is in.
Yeah, I spent a lot of my childhood staying at my grandparents' house in Wales. I want to move there in the future and I'm learning Welsh. My mum lives in Wales and she said some older people at her church were caned in school for speaking Welsh. It's so important to learn.
Whilst the British are indeed at fault for colonising a vast number of countries, particularly in Africa and parts of Asia, which in some cases has led to the suppression of indigenous languages, it is incorrect to apply this logic to Europe (important exceptions being Cyprus and Malta) where national languages are alive and well. In fact it is the cultural dominance of the US in recent years which has led to importance being placed on English being taught at school in European countries. As the other response to this message points out, historically it was an English governmental policy to suppress Britain's own indigenous languages, such as Welsh and BSL.
Yes, this would be a great start indeed, I do agree... & I have been saying something rather similar to this for quite a while now. Imo, this is what true 'reparations' would actually look like, if America would finally stop being petty. Ohio has become a meme for being strange af & as an Ohioan, I can verify that it is very much true & validated... With that being said, the Ohio Valley was once inhabited by indigenous tribes & many areas are sacred. Check out the Serpent Mounds for example... Which, as a National Historic Landmark, was recently Internationally recognized as a World Heritage Site. A deeply accepted belief of mine, is that colonization cursed these lands & as we continued to build atop their sacred grounds, every day citizens of the Ohio Valley & especially Ohioans themselves, have suffered the consequences. & Furthermore... I think that providing honest reparations, such as you have mentioned, would be a great way to resolve that curse. That is all... Thank you. Carry on. lol
It's useful to learn English as a second language but no one should pressure you to lose or abandon your native language, that's practically telling people to abandon their identity and heritage and family
Absolutely agree with you! Learning our native language keeps us in touch with our roots. That's what we usually follow in India. We speak English/Hindi, our state language where we are living & our native language (the culture we originally belong). I speak English (official language), Hindi (state/city language where I live, I.e., New Delhi) & Punjabi (my native language as my culture is originally from the state of Punjab). 😊
Hindi is not native to most Indians. It is equally bad as English. It was the language enforced on Indians by the Mughals and the British. We should speak and use our mother tongues instead of English or Hindi.
@sewerrat We need one or two common languages to communicate wherever we go within India. Otherwise there will be communication problems among each other as we all belong to different cultures & speak different languages.
@@priyab5838 Then how are you against English killing native languages because that is the same logic used to impose it on everyone in the world. Why don't we quit Hindi, Punjabi, Spanish or French and all speak English instead as it has a higher reach and best suited to communicate for humanity? For some parts of North of India, Hindi could be similar to the languages they speak but for South Indians and North Easterners, Sino-Tibetan language speakers, Austronesian speakers, Hindi is as foreign as English. A common language acceptable to all Indians is today English and we're using it now. For Indianness, there's our mother tongue and for communication, there's English. Solves the problem.
Where can I look for resources to learn Ojibwe? Unfortunately I don't live nearby and my grandmother has forgotten how to speak it. I'd love to learn, just have no idea where to start
@@persassyjackson6924Transparent Language has an Ojibwe/Cree combination course (this service is offered through many US public libraries), Rosetta Stone app, and there are also free beginner lessons on RU-vid or Google it. It's one of the native languages that has the most learning resources available.
Im all for learning the native languages of the land we inhabit, but English is not one of them. If you want to learn more about what languages are native to your land go to native-land.ca/ and if you live in Florida/Georgia and want to learn Timucua, this is a great resource (hebuano.wordpress.com/) Also always make sure the languages you’re learning are not closed practices!
@florida.florian Hite. But the more interesting one is Anta, balu pona cho? which means "brother,have you returned alive?" must have been very dangerous back in those days.
This is so cool! I live in Florida also and didn't learn much about the indigenous people from here except the Seminole people. I'd like to learn more thanks for the link
Absolutely, I'm from the county of Cornwall (which was at one point basically a separate country) my ancestors all spoke Cornish, a Celtic language similar to Welsh and Breton until English was forced upon them around the 17th Century (no one knows for certain when the last native speaker died out).
Bit of a semantic nitpick, but English is the “native language” of most people in England now unfortunately, as in it is the only language they speak natively. A few still speak the surviving languages that branched from brittonic (Breton, Cornish, and Welsj), but not unlike the centuries of attack on the goidelic languages (Irish, Manx, and Scottish), the brittonic languages have been under attack for millennia and are rarely spoken as a first language anymore
@@LGrian which was exactly my point. I do find it really strange to think that if that hadn't happened (I love alternative history) Cornish could still be a first language and that I might have spoken it.
celtic people also migrated to the Isles at some point during 5-1 centuries BC. Anglo Saxons migrated a thousand years afterwards, but considering Anglo Saxon and English has ben on the Isles for over one thousand years also, its fairly native. English has only been spoken in America for a few hundred, so its much less native
We have a similar situation in Australia, before colonisation there were so many indigenous peoples living on the land. Now they make up 1% of the population. We fly the indigenous and Torres Strait islanders flag next to the Australian flag, but there is still so much room for improvement.
Same for south America. Pure indigenous population is low. Although there are a lot of mixed natives. Bur thus doesn't make it any better rsince for some reason most south American presidents are white😢. The good thing is we preserve our dialects and promote our cultures and beliefs to be part of the backbone of our societies.
You can find many resources on the websites of many Native Americans. Look for language resources. RU-vid has Lakhota, Dakhota, Apsaaloke, Anishinaabe, Din'e, Inde'h, Comanche, Houma, Kanyienkehaga (Mohawk), Wyandot, Wendat, Onondaga and hundreds of many others.
I’m from the Netherlands and we are by no means a big country, trust me. We have one provincie (kinda like a state I guess?) called Friesland. Friesland is special because they still speak Fries there. Which while having a lot in common with Dutch, isn’t actually that easy to understand. And while younger generations are learning it less and less, it is in fact taught in schools! I’m really happy it is, because that’s unfortunately not true for other parts of the world or is at the very least made it be difficult and only recently in the past 40-50 years been ‘allowed’. That includes countries in Europe. The French are notorious for this with for example the way they treat Bretons and Spain had/has similar issues with Catalonians.
My family visited the island Sylt in northern Germany a few years back. There was this train you could have your car on and the speakers told the instructions first in German then in Fries, because as I understood it, a lot of Friesians lived there. There were houses built in the Friesian style too which was pretty cool. We visited Sylt mostly because my grandpa had been born there, although he moved to Tönder/Tønder when he was 2. It belonged to Germany back then but it’s danish now.
My great-grandfather came from Friesland to North America. My grandfather said this was in part because Frisians were not treated well back then. I'm glad that the situation is different now.
Most of the people who say things like that can only speak one language, and don't understand how much time and effort can go into learning another language and becoming conversational or fully fluent.
Lol except you're literally proving her point ‼️ EXACTLY - You expect her to learn the languages of anywhere she lives or travels to!! Yet or saying she's wrong for saying exactly what you're saying ‼️‼️‼️🤯🤡🤦🏽♀️
@@WarmongerYT Ummm.... huh? You make no sense. I lived abroad for 8 years, and have been travelling solo since I was 16. I know from first hand experience people with attitudes like hers "you should learn English in the US" are also the ones who never learn another language when they travel. I never said anything about my own expectations of her or anyone else... I never said everyone should learn the local language when they travel...you put those words in my mouth. I also never said she was wrong, and I never said what she was saying. You are inferring a lot out of nothing. All I said is that she probably wouldn't do what she expects others to do if she travels. Are you just needing to argue with someone today? Are you frustrated about something and taking it out in the comments?
I am an Irish American, living on Wabenaki territory, that speaks English as a first, and only language, and no sense is English my “native language”. The language my great grandfather spoke was Irish, and the language the indigenous people of the Dawnland speak is Abenaki.
It’s heartbreaking to me how languages here in the US have been completely lost. Words are powerful and to know that entire languages have gone extinct is chilling. So many stories gone. So much beauty lost. Horrible.
The problem is finding people to talk to My Latin went silent after I left shool and the only person I've ever met who was fluent in Latin I can still understand most Spanish, but with no one around who knows it, I now have problems associating the language with spoken sounds The only reason my German and English are still fluent is because I use them every day So don't learn a language alone. Do it in groups so you always have someone to use it with
I'm not Welsh l, but I'm learning Cymraeg. And a friend is Apsáalooke and has given me some language tools so I can pick up some parts of a native language from America. It's not that hard, people. It's actually fun and you learn a lot while studying a language.
Cymraeg is hard to learn. Pronunciation is the reason. I know the name of the city with longest name is Llanfairpwyllgwyngwllgogerichwyndobrasantysiliogochgochgoch... Something to that effect.
Oh my great grandfather came to this country, speaking Irish as his first language, but due to Anglo, American hegemony, he refused to teach my grandmother, his native tongue. I am now slowly, trying to learn the very basics of his language, in an attempt to reclaim that history. so anyone who wants to say that “if you’re in America, you need to speak English”, they can go….and I’m not even gonna finish that sentence because I am honestly so pissed off
I'm thoroughly embarrassed as a Black person, that she thought to drool this out of her mouth onto her bib. I need you(her), to learn what "native" means
still remember the time i was on a bus and a man shouted at a lady talking in what i presume was an african dialect to "speak the native language" (by which he meant english). trouble was we were in ireland. tá daoine dúr i ngach áit.
Sadly, the Ojibway was beaten out of my great grandmother. Also the Catholicism was beaten INTO her...while they tied her left hand behind her back and forbid her to use it. (My son is a leftie, too!) Well... We have gotten rid of the Catholicism in my family, and now, my kids are able to take classes to learn Ojibway! Miigwech (Thank you!) Oh, and we embrace left-handed ness now, too! Colonization was and IS evil.
Many students , particularly in Indian Schools (as such ) were run by nuns, priests, monks and were very strict and harsh and disrespected the culture and beliefs. Speaking your own language got you a beating, mouth washed out and other awful punishments. Carlisle in Pennsylvania was notorious for the way they treated Native Americans. Very disturbing and sad. 😢😢😢
You're content has always been great, but your stalwart anti-iperialism and decolonisialism has been a breath of fresh air in a sea of bootlicking. Much respect 🙏
when I moved to America from Bulgaria, I had a super heavy accent I could speak English well, but I couldn’t speak American. I didn’t know slang I didn’t know anything and got bullied heavily for it. I got rid of my accent, a bit in like middle school, but still known as the immigrant kid which is just so strange isn’t the point of America that it’s a mix of nationalities and different groups of people from different walks of life
I’m from the UK and moved to America for highscool and I had genuinely the worst experience. I felt pretty much the same it was a super weird culture shock and people would genuinely bully me about my accent, culture etc.that was a school in LA where they all act like they’re super politically correct and whatever but if you were to say the things they’d say to me to someone of a different race or ethnic background it would be racism and wrong.
I was born in the US but my grandmother who helped raise me is Finnish. She taught me a lot of words and through her actions I picked up on some cultural norms. I was just an American kid but still got bullied heavily if I said anything in Finnish, even if someone just overheard it when I was picked up from school. It was utterly shocking to me when I was working at a daycare center in college, singing a lullabye to a colicky baby, and someone got so excited it wasn't in English and thought it was amazing I had so much "culture". I was too busy waiting for someone to mock me or worse for singing some sort of black magic or something as I'd only switched languages out of tiredness and inexperience. Even when I remember that moment I feel my stomach plummet. I'm glad she was positive but even her positivity felt mocking in a way.
@@Boconnor401. I made this account when I was like 14, so that's my why lmao. But yaoi is basically semi-adult gay anime (anime if you don't know is Japanese animation).
Came to your channel because of the info on Romani people(non Roma btw, just interested in learning about new things) stayed for the general knowledge about so many different cultures and information i never would have known about. Your channel is genuinely so fascinating and cool, keep up the good work! 😊
agreed - I am British/English and i have tried in the past to learn scottish gaelic, welsh and particularly irish (gaeilge). i have let them slack a little because i want to focus on Spanish but its amazing to try to learn a native language. of course, learning languages is not for everyone but it is a very enriching experience!
It’s fascinating isn’t it. The UK has an extremely rich history and culture and yet a lot of people these days especially younger people don’t know shit about it. If you ever manage to learn Welsh give Cornish a try too they aren’t that different.
Alongside encouraging the making of new words (especially in loan translation forms) in them so as to make it usable in any settings including the most modern ones, a braille or making of them would be just as important since the blind & purblind (nearly or partly blind) should be able to keep their literacy intact just as their sighted peers are. The shared values of the keys across most languages no matter the written form (script) is both helpful & fascinating, especially since native & minority languages could get much mileage from this & every reason to encourage literacy in those (especially for the speakers & learners) is around
I am very into language preservation and I think we need to really do a lot more to promote local language education in the United States. So much is being lost. Indigenous languages, unique American varieties of European languages, creoles, snd immigrant languages are all lost in favor of English. The native language of my area is Powhatan, and it has sadly been lost, but I know people are currently working to reconstruct it, and I really hope they do. I think that while an ethnic approach to language revitalization can work (I’m hoping to learn Irish as a heritage language after all), it would be really cool if America took a regional approach to language preservation, where people learned local languages (either indigenous or regional like Pennsylvania Dutch) from their area, in addition to preserving immigrant languages.
I have actually trying to learn nahuatl, otomi and purépecha, since this languages are native to my state in Mexico(specially otomi and nahuatl). And yes, we all should learn the native languages of our lands!
Dude, by your logic, I shouldn't have to learn Spanish to live in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc, because Spanish isn't native to those countries either. But if I went that way, you'd still be calling me racist for demanding they know my language 🤨 You need to be able to speak, read, and write English to become a US citizen. The US may not have an official language on paper, but you cannot function in the country w/o it long-term. Learning the *main* language of the country you intend to live in is basic practicality and respect. (And yes, I would do just that if I moved to a country that doesn't speak English.)
Lol hate on english as much as you'd like, you're using it rn as it's the most used language worldwide, why would i learn a language that is obsolete? peple get all butthurt about the natives but today's native language IS english because that's what people who are born here are taught to speak
i am a native american. im very fortunate to be part of a tribe whose language is still known to this day. most of us (including myself) only know a handful of words and phrases, but there are still fluent speakers and entire dictionaries out there, which i am so grateful for. im also shocked that a black woman could say these words. does she not realize that her people are also victims of language and culture erasure? its internalized racism for sure
You do need a common language as a country just like other common beliefs and aspects that unify and distinguish a country. Sure English was not always the dominant language or the only one spoken on this continent but it was and is the dominant language spoken in America. You can speak whatever language you want to whoever but generally it is seen as a courtesy to assimilate into American culture which includes speaking the native language to America not North America.
I feel like a good rule of thumb of going to any country to know your greetings and just basic polite phrases of that countries language. Doesn’t need to be a lot but just enough to be nice. If you can’t at least know the culture so you’re not disrespecting anyone.
As a American. I speak Appalachian American as my native language. Did you know? The English language is the business language of the world. Per say of a female Jordanian. I still speak Appalachian American.
Ayoooo Florian might be living in Jacksonville! Fun to see. An eerie feeling is how all the pre-Seminole peoples (aside from the Apalachee who fled to present-day Louisiana) seemed to have lost their peoplehood, language, etc (but I hear that natives like the Timucua and the Calusa may have assimilated to the Seminoles, Hitchiti and/or Yamassee, and maybe other peoples, and that there must be living descendants in Cuba and Gulf Coast Mexico.
as someone who is lakota, thank you for this video. i feel like a lot of people forget that this is a nation of immigrants, especially when it comes to the topics of people speaking english or immigration. i wish more people would be willing to learn indigenous languages to help preserve them and our culture.
“Native language” is a completely different thing than “nationally used and enforced unofficial language”. Had this woman ever heard of the history of North America? Does she know anything about Canada’s history with native children? Outrageous.
It’s native to you not everyone else. It’s currently English and that’s the native language In the present, of the United States. It would be great if our public schools taught us multiple languages from pre k but they don’t. The official language is English. How else do you expect people to communicate with those that don’t speak a certain language? Your theory sounds nice but not manageable. Out of all of the languages, which other language do we choose for a cohesive country? She never did say someone couldn’t speak their native tongue.
there is no explicit official language in the united states, it is a country built on “immigration” (colonization more like it but immigrants and refugees are still an important part of its history regardless) so your argument falls flat. english has never been native in the americas to act like it was is ignorant and foolish. u’t lnueie’g gm’tginu.
@@InciOrucluit isn’t exactly though. Yes technically English isn’t the native language of America, it’s what the country is run on. That and nearly Spanish. Seeing as Spanish is on a course to over take English it could become Spanish. But the idea of learning the native language of the are you’re from is a bit silly seeing as there were so many. It would be so messy and confusing. The best thing we can do it preserve the language by keeping it alive and hopefully one day the culture can come back to life.
If you live in the US, it's definitely extremely helpful to learn english, but Ireland requires people to learn Gaelic until their 13, so why can't the US do the same? I took Navajo as a class a good portion of my life and it's an amazing language, but I lived on a reservation. Sadly our government and failing education system won't allow anything that will genuinely teach kids past grade school
Hey how about talking about things you actually know about 😅 we dont study 'gaelic" , we study Irish/ gaeilge and we study it all through school (til 17/18)
The native languages is the language people understand wherever it is you are, if the vast majority of people in a certain place speak english the native language of that place is english
The area I live in was one of the first places to be settled by England. Those who spoke the native language of my area are pretty much completely gone and there's no revitalisation efforts because it's nearly impossible to even reconstruct it. From the place I was born you probably can, but it's really difficult to find resources to learn it, especially resources geared towards English speakers (as the ones who live there mostly speak Spanish and mine is good, but probably not strong enough to learn a different language through), and it was reconstructed due to severely limited documentation. If it was possible I would love to learn both of them though
Native language where I'm from is French, creole French, and some Italian. I myself know French, some creole French, English, Russian and Greek. I'm pretty sure the lady saying to if your in American learn the language, has never learned another language in her life.
Learning languages is a beautiful thing. It sharpens the mind and it opens so many doors into other cultures and ways of thinking and seeing the world. But it can be hard and to become fluent, one has to invest so much time and energy! I'd love to learn more languages, but between keeping my first foreign language English fresh, becoming conversational fluent in Spanish, and trying to learn how to read and write in Arabic, my brain doesn't have room for more 😅
I adore this channel, it is so informative and fascinating! I have always enjoyed learning about culture and history to get a better understanding of the world I live in so thank you for your channel!!
Yes! I've been thinking sbout this. We have five recognised minority languages (one of them Romani chib) in my country and I think we of the majority language should learn at least one of them. Where I was born it would have been logicto learn Suomi (Finnish) or Saami , where I live now maybe Romani chib or Yiddish.
I'm from australia n I really wanna learn the native language spoken in my area, from what I can tell its one of the more preserved languages which is wonderful!!
I mean I get what she’s saying….BUT then according to her logic if the majority language is the “native language”, then if she’s a American I hope she is bilingual in Spanish, because the amount of translators need for that language is a lot nowadays as a retail worker. So I hope, to appease only a certain majority of people, that she can speak it 😅
It needs to be recognizable the native American language because around the world people think that the official language is English increase myself when I think of America I always think the official language is English so is true that people have been influenced by the English language it has been influence by other languages German Greek Romanian French so the English language is descending from Germanic language the Anglo-Saxon language so many languages like northern Europe has also influence the English language so this is why English is well spoken around the world. But I'm sure that the English language it also has a northern European roots like Denmark or Sweden somehow
Hot take(atleast for this comment section) she’s right. What ever country you inhabit you should make an effort to learn/understand the “common language” of said country. Yes clearly we’re all from different backgrounds, I myself am black, but we live in a country where the common language is English so you should make an effort to learn that language. Especially if you immigrated to said country. this videos creators ancestors got colonized…so did mine. it sucks but such is history. now we both live in a nation where english is the common language so it would be if most use to learn said language
