Obviously this is a pretty international forum, and a comrade asked before which languages we speak, but which languages are you working on? Which ones do you aspire to learn someday even if you aren’t learning it now? I’m a Yank so I know English and took about 5 years of Spanish in HS, I was in the advanced classes, but it was years ago so I can understand Spanish, but I can’t speak it really. I’m learning Russian now because I’ve sorta been learning it informally my whole life, my grandma being born in early 30s rural Belarus meant she always wanted to pass that on to me, she spoke an Eastern dialect of Polish but knew Belarussian and spoke fluent Russian. I just knew basic basic Russian as a kid like Принесите Пожалуйста and Спасибо mixed with other phrases that were very local to her. In the past 2-3 years I decided to officially learn Russian bc the rest of my family is very American (I don’t blame them, that’s where we live and consume the vast vast majority of our entertainment/content from) the Irish side of my family doesn’t give a shit about the history of Ireland nor do any of them speak any word of Gaelic Irish, so at least by learning Russian I can communicate to a few cousins from the old country and my grandma. Realistically speaking Spanish would be most useful to me, being in the US, but if I finish learning Russian I wanna learn Arabic. I want to learn Chinese but goddamn thats one of the toughest ones to learn. I feel like Arabic would be cool to learn. What are yall thinking?
Lmk if you learn Chinese, I’m sorta interested but idk if I should learn Arabic first or not idk which is tougher
They’re both FSI category five languages. For professional working proficiency (e.g to be a US diplomat or military translator) that’s roughly 2200 hours of self study, plus a course of ~6 hours a day, five days a week, for 88 weeks. It won’t take that long to start enjoying native content and having conversations. But they’re both about the same level of difficulty for native English speakers.
Interesting, perhaps I’ll learn Chinese. They have the largest population, they’re a growing economy so it never hurts to understand it in the future for jobs, and most importantly I’ll be able to sing some Maoist bangers from 60s China
It’s a great language to learn.
Look into LR. For reference, for Spanish, I LR’d two books twice. The first was 31 hours. The second was 47 hours. That’s 156 hours in total. Afterwards, I could listen to and understand Harry Potter. I listened to the first four before getting bored. Some books, accents, shows, etc, are still difficult for me now. You have to find the right materials. There are fewer cognates between English and Chinese, so it will be a little more difficult. But if you learn a bit of grammar then ‘assault’ the language (lots of exposure all in a burst), it might not take as long as you think to build listening comprehension.
Here’s the “inventor’s” website: https://web.archive.org/web/20221004162508/http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/! L-R the most important passages.htm
An extract (with some omissions):
Hope this is motivating!