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Hot Potato
#1
* Skaperen tosses you the HotPotatoError
Tradition is peer pressure from dead people

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American.
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#2
One who speaks three languages is Trilingual. If you speak even more
than three languages that person is known as a polyglot. And if
you’re any of the above, then you are known as multilingual.
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#3
but I get it, though... I speak about 5 languages, partly because I just soak up languages (better than anything else I do. Pity there's no money in it!) and partly because I lived in all sorts of places.
What I noticed is that in large countries, people are far more likely to know just the local language.
It makes sense to me.
If you live in a small, poor, country, you have this impetus to study English or whatever gets you out.
If you live in a large, rich country: you can work in lots of good places, shop for varied products, consume a rich culture... Why do you need another language?
Especially English. Americans don't "NEED" to learn another language. Even considering border police - those guys can opt NOT to learn Spanish and just find another job, there's plenty of good jobs in the USA (proven by the need for a border police...)

The leading culture in the world is Anglo-American and everything else, on a global scale, is a minor issue.

Chinese is kinda changing things. Their culture is different and they are ascending to new heights globally... And they are a very respectable size of world population :)
Do I see people in small countries needing to learn Chinese? Let me put it this way, even if more Chinese people spoke Bulgarian than all Bulgarians, than Bulgarian would still be like rank #300 of languages in China... And it's much easier for someone Chinese to learn Bulgarian if they need to, than it is for a Bulgarian to pick up Chinese :)

English is a decent language too.
So yeah, I am a bit proud that I cover more UTF-8 characters with my keyboard but if I could only know one language, it would be English (and I don't even like any English-speaking country... Well, Scotland is kinda nice... Although they don't have jobs, though...)
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#4
English is a lousy language. it is overly dependent on inflections. Chinese and Spanish have an advantage along this line. so do many others.

so locate your new software technology business in Scotland.

if i could, i'd like to move mine to Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, or Switzerland.
Tradition is peer pressure from dead people

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American.
Reply
#5
I got myself into a bit of a financial pickle and I've actually gone into working as an employee (better interest rates and stability, which is what my household needs right now).
So, I am not just going to pick up my stuff and go to Scotland!
Also, even as a freelancer, a lot of English companies want to "feel" the employee and mandate them to go to the office :)

BTW, as I am writing this, I am looking at a near-offer from a Norwegian company. It's still in England but these kinda things open doors - it's how I got to England in the first place!

I wouldn't live in Switzerland or Netherlands. Switzerland is super strict and boring. Other than a few mountains, not much to do there.
On the other hand, they do have shooting sports (which is almost a no-no in England), hm...
Netherlands is very boring. It's all flat planes and farms and then you have Amsterdam, which is a slum and a tourist trap full of obnoxious teens.

Central Europe is great: Poland, CzechRep, Slovakia, Hungary. Amazing nature and Slavic people have a huge inclination towards the good things in life.
Plus, you have the rest of Europe a road trip away.
Salaries are less but life is cheap. If you can find a way to get North Europe Money in Central Europe, you'll be living like a king!
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#6
as for English being lousy... I mean it's your choice if you like it or not. I quite like it (not born in an English-speaking country).

Actually, I am currently working on International Domain Names. This work requires me to look into lots of languages.
For example, Chinese has 19500 "letters" from which you can compose a domain name.
Imagine you have to memorize 19500 letters to be able to express yourself.
Imagine you have to distinguish between 19500 letters when reading (I doubt they all look absolutely different and that there are no letters that are nearly the same visually)

Some nice languages, though:
Bulgarian - the most WYSIWYG language. No funky rules, no "silent K" or "ough" or "eaux"... Also, a rich and expressive language, containing lots of culture
Hebrew - If languages are subjects in school, Hebrew would be "Math". It's a beautiful system of structures and roots. Like functions and arguments and it works since the Bronze age until now. Also, Hebrew is extremely rich, with a well respected institution responsible for maintaining the language. New words are defined all the time, it's really fun.
Points against Hebrew is that it is not pleasant to listen to (Italian or Portuguese will be my choice there) and it is an RTL language, so not friendly for writing with ink (they didn't have ink when it was made up!)
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#7
i should look into Bulgarian. my linguistics classes never got much into it. i tend to like Esperanto.

maybe writing Hebrew with ink is for lefties.
Tradition is peer pressure from dead people

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American.
Reply
#8
(Apr-13-2021, 12:57 PM)Mustey Wrote: but I get it, though... I speak about 5 languages, partly because I just soak up languages (better than anything else I do. Pity there's no money in it!) and partly because I lived in all sorts of places.
What I noticed is that in large countries, people are far more likely to know just the local language.
It makes sense to me.
If you live in a small, poor, country, you have this impetus to study English or whatever gets you out.
If you live in a large, rich country: you can work in lots of good places, shop for varied products, consume a rich culture... Why do you need another language?
Especially English. Americans don't "NEED" to learn another language. Even considering border police - those guys can opt NOT to learn Spanish and just find another job, there's plenty of good jobs in the USA (proven by the need for a border police...)

The leading culture in the world is Anglo-American and everything else, on a global scale, is a minor issue.

Chinese is kinda changing things. Their culture is different and they are ascending to new heights globally... And they are a very respectable size of world population :)
Do I see people in small countries needing to learn Chinese? Let me put it this way, even if more Chinese people spoke Bulgarian than all Bulgarians, than Bulgarian would still be like rank #300 of languages in China... And it's much easier for someone Chinese to learn Bulgarian if they need to, than it is for a Bulgarian to pick up Chinese :)

English is a decent language too.
So yeah, I am a bit proud that I cover more UTF-8 characters with my keyboard but if I could only know one language, it would be English (and I don't even like any English-speaking country... Well, Scotland is kinda nice... Although they don't have jobs, though...)

That's awesome that you have learned five languages.
And the main reason behind your learning is that you
have lived in such places.
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