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I’d say anyone curious would have learned English already. (Before I get bashed for this, I speak 3 languages well and 4 more poorly, English is my third. It r
by doteka 6y ago
I’d say anyone curious would have learned English already.
(Before I get bashed for this, I speak 3 languages well and 4 more poorly, English is my third. It really isn’t a difficult language to learn when all American media and most of computing uses it.)
- d0mine 6y agoI agree. It is ok that my comment above is downvoted but It would nice to hear any counter arguments (it is hard for me to imagine a passionate programmer who can't learn English).
- edgyquant 6y agoThe counter argument is that the GP literally said they know people who are interested but don’t speak English.
- d0mine 6y ago"would help" and "are interested" seems like different categories.
- tjpnz 6y agoI'll give you two: Language learning is difficult and your success with one language has a lot to do with what you speak natively. I've heard that Italian speakers for instance can pick up English with relative ease compared with someone who grew up speaking Japanese. People also have different priorities in life. Past high school and university you've got a career and possibly a family to attend to. Finding enough time to learn another language would be a big ask for many.
- Privacy846 6y agoBut enough about you. There are a lot of places where people aren’t exposed to English-spoken media even if they might consume American media (dubbing in particular).
- tjpnz 6y agoI work with Japanese developers who I would struggle to hold a basic conversation with in English. They're about as curious as anyone else you'd find here and do read similar articles - but in their own language. There's a whole world of articles and open source out there not available in English. The link between language learning and curiosity sounds tenuous at best. I would also add that having access to media in a particular language doesn't mean a lot unless you're prepared to put some effort in. I know expats who've lived in Japan for 20 years and can only speak a few words of Japanese despite being surrounded by it everyday.
- thealig 6y agoIf it's easy, good for you! But from what I've noticed English, with its complicated & chaotic grammar is not that easy for a lot of people around the world that have different 1st & 2nd languages.
- antod 6y agoPerfect English is difficult, but that's the case for nearly all native speakers too. English is nothing but fluid and fault tolerant though, useful communication still happens even with quite broken English.