5 ms·

n=1 data point here, but most of my free time these days is spent learning Finnish, a notoriously difficult language for English monolinguals. (I haven't always

n=1 data point here, but most of my free time these days is spent learning Finnish, a notoriously difficult language for English monolinguals. (I haven't always been in the monolingual camp, but a decade away from Latin has 99% put me back there.) For the most part, I don't feel like it has made me any sharper. Had I taken the ~2000 hours I'm in the hole for so far and spent them on going to the gym and sleeping more I'm nearly certain that would have had a much larger effect on my day to day mental acuity. Had I spent it on my career I'd probably be substantially richer. I probably have another ~2000 to go before I reach a level where I'm happy plateauing. In general I think it's very hard to justify learning a foreign language when subjected to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. I persist mostly because I just really, really, really want to reach true proficiency, not the fake proficiency that gets you an A in Spanish or Latin class, as I outlined in [1]. If you don't have a similar drive your time and energy is probably better spent elsewhere. [1]: https://andrew-quinn.me/thoughts-on-language-learning-at-the-end-of-the-world/ https://andrew-quinn.me/thoughts-on-language-learning-at-the...

rahimnathwani 1y ago
In general I think it's very hard to justify learning a foreign language when subjected to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. This is true for most people. I'd say the exception is if you're learning a language that's native to the place where you live. This reduces the effort required to get conversation practice AND makes it more fun. So rather than choosing between Netflix and language study, you're choosing between Netflix and chatting with people in a bar.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  Well, Finnish is native to the place I live, because I also live in Finland. My experience even here suggests that even this exception is only true for maybe 10-15% of immigrants, which is already a small pool of people. Part of this, of course, is that we're now talking very different goals with different levels of commitment required. You can pick up enough of any language to be fun at a bar in a single digit precentage of the time it takes to become professionally fluent with it. The opportunity cost really is at least one, and maybe two, orders of magnitude lower here, depending on how much "My practice needs to be fun" matters to you. Empirically, from both personal experience and personal observation: Most people who move countries, if they're not already moving as working class professionals with a preexisting command of the native language, just find it much easier to settle into enclaves of similar immigrants and try to interact with the broader society with help from that community. This was as true in the US as it is in Finland, and I've known a lot of immigrants from a lot of different backgrounds throughout my life. Like seeks like everywhere alike. My attempt at being the opposite of this person puts me at odds with most other immigrants I have known. I'm actually the only person I've met here so far who has actually read a complete, non-selkosuomi book in Finnish without being a native or heritage speaker, for example. "Can read an ordinary book written for adults" is not exactly a high bar to pass in absolute terms for any language, but it's higher than what the vast majority of people will ever do in one they didn't grow up with.
heresie-dabord 1y ago
> it's [...] hard to justify learning a foreign language [...] to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. A "normal" existence in a populous, monolingual country may not involve other languages... But human language is remarkably various in the world. Even on HN, knowing a set of non-natural semantics (e.g. coding) is a common profession. Most employers don't pay handsomely for multilingualism, but they do pay software workers well.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  I... don't really understand what this comment means. I don't see why the situation would be any different if your airdropped, say, a 25 year old person who grew up in eg quadrilingual Luxembourg into eg extremely monolingual Yakutsk, and act like their childhood means they can suddenly master the native tongue there without hundreds to thousands of hours of unpaid effort. They would probably do a lot better spending that time, well, getting out of Yakutsk. Assuming no one is holding them there at gunpoint.
  - heresie-dabord 1y ago
    People do make practical choices. To focus on the linguistic challenge of living in Yakutsk, we can agree that a) learning a new language takes time, and b) the Luxembourgish languages might be some help (but not much) for learning Turkic and Russian. > act like their childhood means they can suddenly master the native tongue But there are many cases where those languages would be an advantage. Say, in learning Spanish and English. People can and do learn languages. Some people are better at it than others. But people emigrate (or escape, as you say) and adapt. Programming languages are a (simplified) subset of human languages. Programmers learn a marketable skill. (I use about five programming languages at work.) Employers will pay people well for programming -- better than I have seen people paid for speaking several human languages. The way that people complain about programming languages (simplified as they are!) is somewhat related to broader struggles with learning human languages.
    - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

rahimnathwani 1y ago

In general I think it's very hard to justify learning a foreign language when subjected to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. This is true for most people. I'd say the exception is if you're learning a language that's native to the place where you live. This reduces the effort required to get conversation practice AND makes it more fun. So rather than choosing between Netflix and language study, you're choosing between Netflix and chatting with people in a bar.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
Well, Finnish is native to the place I live, because I also live in Finland. My experience even here suggests that even this exception is only true for maybe 10-15% of immigrants, which is already a small pool of people. Part of this, of course, is that we're now talking very different goals with different levels of commitment required. You can pick up enough of any language to be fun at a bar in a single digit precentage of the time it takes to become professionally fluent with it. The opportunity cost really is at least one, and maybe two, orders of magnitude lower here, depending on how much "My practice needs to be fun" matters to you. Empirically, from both personal experience and personal observation: Most people who move countries, if they're not already moving as working class professionals with a preexisting command of the native language, just find it much easier to settle into enclaves of similar immigrants and try to interact with the broader society with help from that community. This was as true in the US as it is in Finland, and I've known a lot of immigrants from a lot of different backgrounds throughout my life. Like seeks like everywhere alike. My attempt at being the opposite of this person puts me at odds with most other immigrants I have known. I'm actually the only person I've met here so far who has actually read a complete, non-selkosuomi book in Finnish without being a native or heritage speaker, for example. "Can read an ordinary book written for adults" is not exactly a high bar to pass in absolute terms for any language, but it's higher than what the vast majority of people will ever do in one they didn't grow up with.

heresie-dabord 1y ago

> it's [...] hard to justify learning a foreign language [...] to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. A "normal" existence in a populous, monolingual country may not involve other languages... But human language is remarkably various in the world. Even on HN, knowing a set of non-natural semantics (e.g. coding) is a common profession. Most employers don't pay handsomely for multilingualism, but they do pay software workers well.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
I... don't really understand what this comment means. I don't see why the situation would be any different if your airdropped, say, a 25 year old person who grew up in eg quadrilingual Luxembourg into eg extremely monolingual Yakutsk, and act like their childhood means they can suddenly master the native tongue there without hundreds to thousands of hours of unpaid effort. They would probably do a lot better spending that time, well, getting out of Yakutsk. Assuming no one is holding them there at gunpoint.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  People do make practical choices. To focus on the linguistic challenge of living in Yakutsk, we can agree that a) learning a new language takes time, and b) the Luxembourgish languages might be some help (but not much) for learning Turkic and Russian. > act like their childhood means they can suddenly master the native tongue But there are many cases where those languages would be an advantage. Say, in learning Spanish and English. People can and do learn languages. Some people are better at it than others. But people emigrate (or escape, as you say) and adapt. Programming languages are a (simplified) subset of human languages. Programmers learn a marketable skill. (I use about five programming languages at work.) Employers will pay people well for programming -- better than I have seen people paid for speaking several human languages. The way that people complain about programming languages (simplified as they are!) is somewhat related to broader struggles with learning human languages.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago