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Unless you love the culture, there's no reason to learn a language besides English. I would ditch the knowledge and thousands of hours spent on my native langua

Unless you love the culture, there's no reason to learn a language besides English. I would ditch the knowledge and thousands of hours spent on my native language to improve my English, or really any other skill. Always funny watching Americans try to larp as cultured cosmopolitans by learning a language they'll never actually need. Especially in 2025, when you can just point an AI at something and ask it to read it for you.

swat535 1y ago
I'm not sure about that. I speak 3 language fluently, I think its important to nurture your native language. Perhaps because we partially identify our personalities and cultures based on our mother tongue, but I would feel like a part of me would be lost if I drop it. I agree with your point regarding English however, I think everyone should learn it regardless and I can't help but feel like it's a lighthearted language. I wonder if others are the same, but I feel like a different person based on the language I speak.. somehow I'm "kinder" (is that the right word?) when I speak English for example..
BuckRogers 1y ago
You should be complementing people trying to be cosmopolitan and learning another language. There’s nothing wrong with that. And as people have commented here, it’s good for their mind. It seems that Americans can never win. Either the most racist xenophobic people in the world that deserve to have foreigners take their country over. Or, they’re fake cosmopolitans larping. Of course the real answer is that people are just envious of Americans. But we won’t go into that. It’s true that AI is making nearly any intellectual endeavor pointless from a necessity standpoint. But that’s OK, we’re going to be able to intellectually dive into things that we actually want to do for enjoyment in the future. People will still learn languages and study whatever they want. I find foreign language is interesting and fun. I don’t know if it’s the brain stimulation or just the sheer joy of having a secret language that many people around me don’t understand.
FlyingSnake 1y ago
This is such a sad and utilitarian take. I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many languages as possible. I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  You'd rather spend hundreds of hours learning enough Spanish to read 100 Years of Solitude, then read 100 Years of Solitude, then hundreds more hours learning Russian, then read Dostoevsky - when both of these works have already been translated to death by some of the world's most talented translators into English? I side with the utilitarian here. You're in a very small class of people if the inherent joy of language learning is so strong for you that that sounds like a good idea. Like, think of all the other things you could do with that time. Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2?
  - FlyingSnake 1y ago
    I’ve read these classics in the languages I know. I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. I think our time scales are on different scales. I treat this as a lifelong pursuit and savour it slowly in a leisurely manner. I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way.
    - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
      >I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. This is an interesting point where our experiences totally differ. I have myself read a few classics in both original and translation, between the English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate, such as Cien Años de Soledad as you mentioned. I percieved little if any drop in quality between Marquez and the translation - indeed I often thought the translated work was superior to the original. It's not a classic in the same vein, but I similarly found the modern Latin translations of Harry Potter were much more fun than the original English prose, which even as a kid felt very workaday and even uninspired at times to me. So I see this more as evidence that you put a very high aesthetic value on linguistic purism than anything else. You don't just want the thing, you like working really hard to get the original thing. You like pushing the boulder up that hill. To be clear, I consider that an extremely commendable character trait, I just also think it means you're living on another planet compared to most of the population. Which isn't a bad thing, it's nice here. >I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way. It may be a sacrifice you're happy to make, but you are absolutely making some kind of large tradeoff every time you invest 500-1500 hours into learning a new language to C1 level, man. Like come on. That's like the economic definition of an opportunity cost.
082349872349872 1y ago
As a US emigrant, the joke I was told when I first arrived (with B2 german and nearly nonexistent french and italian) in my adoptive country went as follows: Q. What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? A. Trilingual Q. What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? A. Bilingual Q. What do you call someone who speaks 1 language? A. American Q. What do you call an American who speaks multiple languages? A. CIA

swat535 1y ago

I'm not sure about that. I speak 3 language fluently, I think its important to nurture your native language. Perhaps because we partially identify our personalities and cultures based on our mother tongue, but I would feel like a part of me would be lost if I drop it. I agree with your point regarding English however, I think everyone should learn it regardless and I can't help but feel like it's a lighthearted language. I wonder if others are the same, but I feel like a different person based on the language I speak.. somehow I'm "kinder" (is that the right word?) when I speak English for example..

BuckRogers 1y ago

You should be complementing people trying to be cosmopolitan and learning another language. There’s nothing wrong with that. And as people have commented here, it’s good for their mind. It seems that Americans can never win. Either the most racist xenophobic people in the world that deserve to have foreigners take their country over. Or, they’re fake cosmopolitans larping. Of course the real answer is that people are just envious of Americans. But we won’t go into that. It’s true that AI is making nearly any intellectual endeavor pointless from a necessity standpoint. But that’s OK, we’re going to be able to intellectually dive into things that we actually want to do for enjoyment in the future. People will still learn languages and study whatever they want. I find foreign language is interesting and fun. I don’t know if it’s the brain stimulation or just the sheer joy of having a secret language that many people around me don’t understand.

FlyingSnake 1y ago

This is such a sad and utilitarian take. I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many languages as possible. I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
You'd rather spend hundreds of hours learning enough Spanish to read 100 Years of Solitude, then read 100 Years of Solitude, then hundreds more hours learning Russian, then read Dostoevsky - when both of these works have already been translated to death by some of the world's most talented translators into English? I side with the utilitarian here. You're in a very small class of people if the inherent joy of language learning is so strong for you that that sounds like a good idea. Like, think of all the other things you could do with that time. Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read 20 classics instead of 2?
- FlyingSnake 1y ago
  I’ve read these classics in the languages I know. I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. I think our time scales are on different scales. I treat this as a lifelong pursuit and savour it slowly in a leisurely manner. I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    >I’ve also read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel. This is an interesting point where our experiences totally differ. I have myself read a few classics in both original and translation, between the English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate, such as Cien Años de Soledad as you mentioned. I percieved little if any drop in quality between Marquez and the translation - indeed I often thought the translated work was superior to the original. It's not a classic in the same vein, but I similarly found the modern Latin translations of Harry Potter were much more fun than the original English prose, which even as a kid felt very workaday and even uninspired at times to me. So I see this more as evidence that you put a very high aesthetic value on linguistic purism than anything else. You don't just want the thing, you like working really hard to get the original thing. You like pushing the boulder up that hill. To be clear, I consider that an extremely commendable character trait, I just also think it means you're living on another planet compared to most of the population. Which isn't a bad thing, it's nice here. >I don’t need to sacrifice anything that way. It may be a sacrifice you're happy to make, but you are absolutely making some kind of large tradeoff every time you invest 500-1500 hours into learning a new language to C1 level, man. Like come on. That's like the economic definition of an opportunity cost.

082349872349872 1y ago

As a US emigrant, the joke I was told when I first arrived (with B2 german and nearly nonexistent french and italian) in my adoptive country went as follows: Q. What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? A. Trilingual Q. What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? A. Bilingual Q. What do you call someone who speaks 1 language? A. American Q. What do you call an American who speaks multiple languages? A. CIA