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> Is there any significant advantage in Mandarin having a billion native speakers over German having 83 million or Czech having 10 million Yes, definitely.

jodrellblank 7y ago
Citation needed. I have no plans to ever go to China. Mandarin has an estimated 0 utility for me. I have read more school-level German than I ever will read or speak Mandarin in my life. The number of Mandarin speakers could be 5 or 5 trillion, if they're all half a world away it doesn't affect me. Germany is close, I have been there, I might go again. Dunbar's number is around 150, as long as the number of speakers is sufficient that there's a good chance of finding 500 to talk to in a lifetime, and 500 books or films of interest to consume in a lifetime, more than that seems no benefit. That is, 100 people is not enough - but somewhere in the region of tens or hundreds of thousands seems easily enough for a boundary. "There are a billion people, therefore learn this language" is even less convincing as a reason to learn something; it's popular, so you should do it".
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  No, a citation is not needed. And since you're so hell-bent against learning Mandarin, go learn German. It won't be a complete and utter waste of time, unlike learning Esperanto.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    I spent five years learning German at school and got decent grades, but also got nowhere in useful skill. I spent two years learning Latin at school and got nowhere near comprehension. I spent some months learning Esperanto on and off as an adult, and have spoken to people using it, read a simple book in it, listened to podcasts in it, changed my understanding of what it means to learn a different language, understood more about grammar and made many English word-origin connections through it, and enjoyed it. Your hating on something which doesn't affect you, then refusing to explain your position is way more of a waste of time.
    - oarabbus_ 7y ago
      You'd have been better served learning Klingon.
      - jodrellblank 7y ago
        But why? What is behind your anti-Esperanto agenda in this thread?
    - nilkn 7y ago
      You're attributing the difference in success here to Esperanto, but my guess is the key differentiator was actually how you went about studying the language and how interested and motivated you were. I took two years of Spanish in high school and gained more or less nothing from it. I decided one day as an adult I wanted to learn Spanish, and within a few months I could hold (very basic) conversations in Spanish. What did I do? Well, I probably did what you did with Esperanto. I started reading extensive passages in untranslated Spanish even when I didn't know the language, looking up any word or conjugation I couldn't remember. I more or less ignored grammar, except when I just couldn't figure out why something would be said one way instead of some other way. That quickly sent me down some interesting rabbit holes that even native speakers struggled to fully explain, but as a result I rapidly got to the point of being able to form reasonably complicated sentences. I started listening to stuff in Spanish. Any time I was about to ask someone a simple question in English, I'd ask myself, "so how would I ask this in Spanish instead?" I obsessed over pronunciation, and even though I'll never perfect it I'm much better than I ever was in high school. For what it's worth, my primary tool in all of this was just LingQ.
      - chillacy 7y ago
        I'm not the parent but while you are correct that it is the same, I would not overlook the order of magnitude of difference in effort required either. If you were learning Mandarin instead of Spanish for instance, the process would be the same but everything would take ~4x as long, and based on the attrition rates I've seen from English->Chinese learning, you'd be more likely to quit before being able to read a 3rd grade passage.

jodrellblank 7y ago

Citation needed. I have no plans to ever go to China. Mandarin has an estimated 0 utility for me. I have read more school-level German than I ever will read or speak Mandarin in my life. The number of Mandarin speakers could be 5 or 5 trillion, if they're all half a world away it doesn't affect me. Germany is close, I have been there, I might go again. Dunbar's number is around 150, as long as the number of speakers is sufficient that there's a good chance of finding 500 to talk to in a lifetime, and 500 books or films of interest to consume in a lifetime, more than that seems no benefit. That is, 100 people is not enough - but somewhere in the region of tens or hundreds of thousands seems easily enough for a boundary. "There are a billion people, therefore learn this language" is even less convincing as a reason to learn something; it's popular, so you should do it".

oarabbus_ 7y ago
No, a citation is not needed. And since you're so hell-bent against learning Mandarin, go learn German. It won't be a complete and utter waste of time, unlike learning Esperanto.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  I spent five years learning German at school and got decent grades, but also got nowhere in useful skill. I spent two years learning Latin at school and got nowhere near comprehension. I spent some months learning Esperanto on and off as an adult, and have spoken to people using it, read a simple book in it, listened to podcasts in it, changed my understanding of what it means to learn a different language, understood more about grammar and made many English word-origin connections through it, and enjoyed it. Your hating on something which doesn't affect you, then refusing to explain your position is way more of a waste of time.
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    You'd have been better served learning Klingon.
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      But why? What is behind your anti-Esperanto agenda in this thread?
  - nilkn 7y ago
    You're attributing the difference in success here to Esperanto, but my guess is the key differentiator was actually how you went about studying the language and how interested and motivated you were. I took two years of Spanish in high school and gained more or less nothing from it. I decided one day as an adult I wanted to learn Spanish, and within a few months I could hold (very basic) conversations in Spanish. What did I do? Well, I probably did what you did with Esperanto. I started reading extensive passages in untranslated Spanish even when I didn't know the language, looking up any word or conjugation I couldn't remember. I more or less ignored grammar, except when I just couldn't figure out why something would be said one way instead of some other way. That quickly sent me down some interesting rabbit holes that even native speakers struggled to fully explain, but as a result I rapidly got to the point of being able to form reasonably complicated sentences. I started listening to stuff in Spanish. Any time I was about to ask someone a simple question in English, I'd ask myself, "so how would I ask this in Spanish instead?" I obsessed over pronunciation, and even though I'll never perfect it I'm much better than I ever was in high school. For what it's worth, my primary tool in all of this was just LingQ.
    - chillacy 7y ago
      I'm not the parent but while you are correct that it is the same, I would not overlook the order of magnitude of difference in effort required either. If you were learning Mandarin instead of Spanish for instance, the process would be the same but everything would take ~4x as long, and based on the attrition rates I've seen from English->Chinese learning, you'd be more likely to quit before being able to read a 3rd grade passage.