Being an #American who can only speak #english is absolute hell when you want to be involved in the #foss / #opensource community as everyone I end up talking to for support is either rude to me, thinks I'm dumb as rocks and have never operated a computer, or can't really speak the language well enough themselves to help which, fine I understand, English is hard for me sometimes so being bilingual must be insanely hard, but I really wish it were easier to communicate with people without the assumption you're a dumbass. Its probably part of the reason our movement has so many preferring to never try.
Discussion
communication is always hard everywhere. I luckily don't share your experience as a native German speaker. It takes a good amount of time to learn more languages, but having to do it in school early on makers it easier. I find it a bit sad that most of what I knew about French kind of vanished, but I still can understand a bit and try to read it, especially as I discovered nostr:npub12k0pgpwq4axaxe86xkestt6czawktqytn9sxj2mmqdzw245lrqxsrwe2sz , which is based on France.
Unfortunately US schools only make learning 2nd languages a part of the curriculum after you turn 14, and even then it isnt mandatory. Our local representatives like to pretend we have the best school system in the world.
14 is not that late but usualy lenguages are learned much younger. Where I live there are two oficial lenguages plus english so its easy enough to have trilingual people around