Comment by MasterScrat
16 hours ago
This hasn't been my experience, using TikTok from Switzerland, I almost exclusively see English language, with a focus on my interests
16 hours ago
This hasn't been my experience, using TikTok from Switzerland, I almost exclusively see English language, with a focus on my interests
Switzerland has just 8 million people, which are divided into two big language groups. And most people speak (or at least understand) English. So, it's natural for the algorithm to converge to content in English.
Lived in Switzerland and this is really not true.
What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages (German, French and Italian) children and teens at school focus on learning one of the other two regions they are not from.
In particular this leads to French and Italian cantons to be moderately fluent in each other's language. Strikingly when I lived in Lausanne, more people knew Italian than English. English was really not on their radar (plus, add that francophones are kind of elitist when it comes to languages and don't really like to consume content that is not in french).
In German speaking Switzerland proficiency in English was still subpar from most of the rest of Europe when walking in a shop or going to a restaurant.
> What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages
Everyone always forgets Romansh...
Not to derail, but when I was in Switzerland, I found the German Swiss to be far more elitarian about NOT learning French, than the other way around. And French Swiss being a minority, they kinda got treated as other or less-than in the bulk of Switzerland. But all German Swiss are at least willing to try English, while the French Swiss tend to avoid English, so maybe that's where the vibe comes from?
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Switzerland has 4 official languages and English is not one of them.
> And most people speak (or at least understand) English.
This is wrong. In cities where there's a lot of tourism, they might understand. Most Swiss people only speak their local languages (German or French). As for those living in Ticino, they tend to be better polyglots.
That doesn‘t match my experience.
About 40% of all Swiss inhabitants speak English at least once a week [1].
Anecdotally, I can't think of a single acquaintance younger than 50 years old that doesn't speak fluently. Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.
Some of my German speaking friends even talk in English to French speaking people, even when both have learned the other‘s respective language at school.
[1]: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerun...
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I met plenty of people in Lausanne who didn't speak English, or at least didn't want to speak English (it is hard to tell, and anyways, it doesn't really matter). I visited Montreal shortly after my 2 year stay in Lausanne ended and I was surprised on how multi-lingual people were there.
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It is not German, but Alemannic.
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This is simply not true. Even standard German is a second language in Switzerland. I’m Swiss.
It depends what you interact with. I tried it fresh today and it quickly decided I'm a Berliner muslim who likes Nigerian food because I lingered for a minute on something. That interest graph is very fast and volatile.
Uhh... that's kind of how these algorithms work. I presume you interact (i.e. don't scroll past) with a lot of the English posts. It's going to index on that and show you more English content. When I'm abroad, I might see a few posts in their native language but the algorithm will revert to showing English posts about the city/country once it realizes I'm not really jiving with Portuguese posts, for example.
An illiterate coworker of mine showed me his phone and asked for help. It was utterly amazing, he exclusively got videos from goat and donkey farmers. The most stunning part was that most of the videos were completely hilarious. People talking to their goat then the goat does what they say or the opposite on purpose.
i mean, we all have the algorithm tailored to what we want to see, so the parent comment here is kind of a moot point, right?
I joined TikTok and was immediately barraged with naked young girls. Haven't been back since.