Fleetwing wrote:

Doesn't matter; this is a fun little swerve.

Don't misunderstand me, I certainly agree. It was my digression, after all, that started it. I just like noting how conversations change.

Fleetwing wrote:

But tricnomistal is right -- it would be great if we had more emphasis on learning at least one foreign language well. (Which one, though? I guess it doesn't matter.)

I've spent a long time trying to answer that question. Spanish is an obvious choice, but I've never really found Romance langues terribly interesting. We could all learn an auxiliary language like Esperanto, but that would be boring for different reasons... And many of the other practical choices are difficult to compare because many of the speakers we interact with know enough English to get by... So, I throw practicality out the window and start suggesting things like one of the Berber languages of North Africa because too few people learn them and I like the alphabet (or abjad, I guess), or Mongolian because of Genghis Khan and also I like the alphabet, or Georgian because I really like the alphabet... There may be a pattern to my choices...

M. Höhne wrote:

Fleetwing wrote:

... snip ...
But tricnomistal is right -- it would be great if we had more emphasis on learning at least one foreign language well. (Which one, though? I guess it doesn't matter.)

Ja. Wer kennt nicht eine fremde Sprache, kennt nicht seine eigene. 

Ich kann ein bitschien Deutsch, aber Ich bin nicht sehr gut.  I understood that that said something like "[one] who does not know a(n) (unknown adjective) language, doesn't know their (unknown word)" So, I'd charitably say my German is at like a D- ...

Fleetwing wrote:

I got it! I humor myself that I'm OK in German, but then I read some and realize how wrong I am.

 
I've resolved to try (again) to learn German. I've had it in my mind to become (at least) bilingual. What tipped the scale to German was that there are a lot of typewriter manuals that I've only found in German. So I need to be able to read them.

tricnomistal wrote:

M. Höhne wrote:

Fleetwing wrote:

... snip ...
But tricnomistal is right -- it would be great if we had more emphasis on learning at least one foreign language well. (Which one, though? I guess it doesn't matter.)

Ja. Wer kennt nicht eine fremde Sprache, kennt nicht seine eigene. 

Ich kann ein bitschien Deutsch, aber Ich bin nicht sehr gut.  I understood that that said something like "[one] who does not know a(n) (unknown adjective) language, doesn't know their (unknown word)" So, I'd charitably say my German is at like a D- ...

"One who does not know a foreign language does not [truly] know his own." I guess Goethe didn't know English or he would have spoken so we could understand. :-)

Hahaha I also "narrowed down my foreign languages" in order to learn about everything on internet like 4 to 5. Sadly is very little information and forums in my mother tongue :-) but it is easy to learn a new language when your own is quite complicate to begin with.