In my experience and world travels I think the only people i have met who have scoffed at or diminished the value, or just said they don't get it, when it comes to second languages are Americans. You won't hear that from Europeans generally nor Canadians nor in my limited travels of Africa.

In many cases, i think it comes from conscious or subconscious competitive drive. Languages are a thing many OTHER people value and is often take as a cue of increased intellect. It is additive to ones resume generally if you have all the same technical components but you can swing between 3 different languages in the Board room or a meeting. People get impressed. And thus why I think you some prevalence where 'smart guys' without languages tend to diminish the value of them.

Me and my entourage always happy to see people trying to speak French shrug .

I know if I'm being sworn at in Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.



The answer to this question boils down to necessity.

English is the language of money. Native English speakers who learn other languages do so mostly for reasons beyond monetary ones. Non-native English speakers learn English because doing so is enormously +EV.

I should really buckle down and learn Spanish because it would be beneficial for our business, but not so much that it feels like a necessity.

I read your post again and it struck me as odd this time: you very well establish a hierarchy between different domains of knowledge; I have no grievances in regards to that hierarchy. It's the fact that you claim that only by accepting that arbitrary distinction my appraisal of the experience of learning foreign languages becomes ''true'' or ''right''. I think that position almost likely has problematic implications.

why you put kanye in this thread bobo?

oh yes languages. do you speak another language?

Yes I do, but I have to say I feel a bit uncomfortable naming them.

But you started another thread in OOT in which you invited people to ask you questions in other languages and you answered the questions in those languages if you were able to do so?

I thought that thread could be an opportunity to engage in coversation with indivuals outside the Anglosphere, and also to share my experience as a language learner. The title I used had the purpose of attracting people to the thread. Even there, I didn't specify which languages I spoke, at least no in the early stages of it; then someone asked me the question and I ended up answering it. The thread failled since I got mostly very simple questions and a guy even used Google translate to ask me something in Russian, exposing his creative genius. Some threads after my response in the same language, he said ''chances of this guy using Google translate to impress some randos on the internet? 100%''. At that point I knew nothing enriching would come out of it and it'd eventually die, which quite soon happened. Anyway I perceive this part of the forum and OOT as two completely different entities, almost entirely because of the differences between posters. Being PAS populated by a more serious cohort I feel even more uncomfortable here naming the languages speak one by one.

Yo ShoeMakerLevy, I'm really happy for you, imma let you finish but logic and probability is one of the most important topics of all time…one of the most important topics of all time!

I've been studying French for 3 years. I can read it decently, but speaking, understanding native French speakers and writing is a complete mess.

Just rent some good French movie to practice ?

Certainly not Amelie. One I really liked: ''Les intouchables''.

Great suggestion

Long rambly post on the differences between Spanish and Portuguese:

So I've been in Brazil about 3 weeks now probably speaking more Portuguese in just a few week than I spent speaking Spanish after living months in Colombia.

It's definitely easier for me to understand Brazilian Portuguese (at least as spoken in the northeast) than the "Paisa" accent spoken around Medellin. No idea why I find Paisa so difficult but I met a Venezuelan who was like "yeah I couldn't understand anything for the first two weeks I was here". I visited a place with lots of Venezuelans and could tell upon meeting someone if they were Venezuelan based on their increased intelligibility for me.

It's long been known that Portuguese speakers have an easier time understanding Spanish than vice-versa. While Spanish is spoken faster, it has a simpler phonemic inventory (5 vowels in Spanish compared to 12 vowels in Portuguese-- 7 oral and 5 nasal). English by comparison has around 14 vowels depending on the dialect. And so while native Portuguese speakers don't have too hard of a time adjusting to the speed of Spanish, the same can't be said for native Spanish speakers adjusting to the more complex sounds of Portuguese. A similar sort of situation exists between Norwegian and Swedish.

For me however, the speed at which Spanish is spoken has sometimes felt like an insurmountable barrier. It's like language spoken at 1.5x speed whereas Portuguese just seems a lot more accessible at only 1.2x speed (I'm just making those numbers up although research has been done here finding the two fastest spoken languages are Spanish and Japanese-- which both have very similar phonemic inventories). It probably doesn't help that early on in my Spanish listening career I just gave up trying to understand people-- I realized that whatever people said I didn't need to actually listen and I could say "¿Cómo?" and they'd repeat it back to me slower-- which isn't exactly an effective strategy if you want to get better at listening comprehension.
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Then there is the whole topic of 'Portuñol'-- which unfortunately I'll be relegated to speaking forever. I mix Portuguese words into my Spanish and Spanish into my Portuguese. I definitely don't regret in any way trying to learn both languages-- but their proximity to each other means that keeping them separated is very difficult. So many words are identical or near identical that it takes a really strong command of both to know where all the divergences are. I told a lady today that I didn't want to 'molesta-lhe' about something-- and in Spanish 'molestar' means 'to bother', in Portuguese it means just what you might think it would mean as an English speaker...oops. I told someone else that I had my 'carpa' (tent) with me but in Portuguese the word is 'barraca' and 'carpa' refers to the fish.

It definitely doesn't help when people make random accomodations for you and then start mixing Spanish into their own speech to try to make it easier for you. Was out with a girl and her aunt and she said something was 'dulce' (sweet) when the word is 'doce' and the aunt is like "dulce?!?" and she explains "I'm trying to make it easier for him"-- which is nice but not really helpful in the long run.

My theory: portuguese is just spanish with a really thick russian accent

I don't it's that big a deal to use the wrong word when two languages bleed into each other. The first goal of language, communication, is usually satisfied. No-one's really going to be offended when you mix up the portuguese and spanish meanings of a thing. I've had a similar thing recently, learning spanish with duolingo (which kinda sucks because it's teaching south american spanish to north american english and i want british english to spanish spanish, but whatever) but having learnt italian at school and at home means i'm just straight up accessing the wrong memory banks time after time. Like the spanish waiters who laughed when i asked for burro con mi pan- 'que loco ingles, burro con su pan!'

That's a fun one.

Yeah European Portuguese can definitely come off Russian-- BP not so much. EP is like Portuguese with marbles in your mouth. I've watched enough YouTube videos of it to have somewhat of a feel for it but it's still pretty weird. Brazilian guy I know told me once he'd rather speak Spanish than try to communicate with EP speakers.

And yeah I've studied a bit of Italian and it's super similar.

contento, amigo

Parlo un po d'italiano , un poco de español también, agus tá Gaeilge agam freisin.

Aren't they all based around Latin? If you spoke say, Spanish or Portuguese fluently, you would most likely have an understanding of French, Italian and Romanian.
When I was in Holland I found I could semi understand some Dutch, so it must be similar in a sense to English and probably German,

I think fluent Spanish and Portuguese would grant you some understanding of Italian, but French and Romanian are divergent enough that you wouldn't get too far with them. Romanian has lots of Slavic loanwords and French is.... French.

Just wait til you get a hold of Ladin, Provencal, Basque, Sicilian... any others I'm missing? Scouse maybe.

Egg in French: œuf
Italian: uovo
Spanish huevo
Gaeilge Ubh
Romanian ou

King in French: Roi
Italian Re
Spanish Rey
Gaeilge Rí
Romanian Rege

the word for bedroom is camera in Italian and Romanian and Monday & Tuesday are exactly the same in Romanian, Gaeilge and very similar in Italian, French & Spanish.

There's enough similarities there where you might get the gist of each language if you spoke one fluently

Basque is completely unrelated to Romance-- it's a language isolate not related to any other extant languages.