On Friday, 16 March 2018 4:05:50 PM AEDT Trent W. Buck via luv-talk wrote:
Russell Coker wrote:
OK, but WHY are you focusing solely on the anglophone community?
Because they are the ones that are connected to us.
That's a depressingly "White Australia Policy" attitude to take.
No that's just an analysis of the facts.
e.g. one in four Australians speak a LOTE at home
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#cite_ref-50
e.g. one in four Australians was born overseas, of which the biggest contributing nations are UK, New Zealand, and China. We've more Sri Lankan immigrants than US immigrants.
Thanks for the link. It shows that 72.7% of Australians only speak English at home and the next most popular language is Mandarin at 2.5%. So 72.7% of Australians can't follow politics in non-English countries easily. I have some friends in Spain, Japan, and the Netherlands who I follow on Facebook. I read the translations of their Facebook posts and sometimes discuss it with them. I usually don't comment on Facebook because I'm not confident enough in the ability of Google translation to not make a hash of things. Now I'm sure the 2.5% of Australians who speak Mandarin are influenced by what happens in China and the 1.4% who speak Arabic will be influenced by what happens in the Middle East. But it doesn't really compare to the 72.7% who are exposed to American media every day.
e.g. our biggest trading partners are in East Asia, not North America (nor UK).
UPDATE: I'm wrong; the top bilateral partners in decreasing order are CN, US, JP, KR, UK, NZ, SG, TH. http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/trade-at-a-glance/Pages/default.aspx
Comparing exports and imports separately presents a different picture https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/#Destinations https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/#Origins
If you asked some random Australians to name the leaders of countries then almost everyone would get the US correct, a good portion would get the UK correct, and many would get North Korea reasonably correct due to Trump tweeting about him. If you asked some random Australians about the systems of government of other countries I expect that most could give a rough summary of the US system as well as describing at least 2 consititutional amendments. Most Australians are aware of the UK system in general (partly due to it being like our system) but probably most don't know about some of the peculiarities like who gets to be in the upper house. For popular political TV shows there's The West Wing, House of Cards, and Yes Minister. I'm sure that there are some great shows about the governments of non-English speaking countries, but I don't know of them and I think it's safe to assume that the majority of Australians aren't watching them. I'm pretty sure that most Australians are familiar with at least one of those political TV shows I cited. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/