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Nothing against Scala here at all. But I've heard that if you try to learn Mandarin as an adult westerner, you will never get to a point of conversational comfo
by nickbauman 11y ago
Nothing against Scala here at all. But I've heard that if you try to learn Mandarin as an adult westerner, you will never get to a point of conversational comfort in the language, let alone sound like you have native mastery of it: it's too complex and has tonality that westerners don't have anything to compare to. So this is a particularly poor choice of analogy if you're trying to make a case for Scala.
- skippytheroo 11y agoI selected Mandarin at random. Perhaps I should have just put $RANDOM_SPOKEN_LANGUAGE ;)
- clw8 11y agoActually, it's a good analogy because Mandarin's difficulty is also overblown. It's hard, yes, but I have no trouble being understood by the Chinese, and any Westerner living in China who makes the effort inevitably comes to that point as well.
- vzip 11y agoPeople say that about Mandarin, and really language learning as an adult in general, but the truth is most people don't put themselves in the situations to learn a foreign language nor do they exert the consistent effort required to acquire it. The biggest problem with Mandarin is not the tones but the fact that you can't fall back on written language to help you out with anything at all. It's like learning two difficult languages at once. If you really want to learn it, though, it's entirely possible. All it requires is a human brain and consistent effort.