Choosing a language to learn

[Logan-]

What foreign language have you chosen to learn? Why?

 

[Perry Staltic]

I think German might be a good option, but I don’t like the german culture and society. Rigid, closed-minded, authoritarian, narcissistic, stiff, robotic... just the opposite of what Ray Peat has talked and written about as positive traits.

You could do that with any culture. What is rigid, closed-minded, authoritarian, narcissistic, stiff, robotic to one person can be seen by another person as disciplined, mentally focused, strong leadership, sense of self-worth, committed, efficient. My gripe with Germans is that they sometimes tend to over-engineer things, i.e. make things more complex than they really need to be.

 

[Herbie]

You could do that with any culture. What is rigid, closed-minded, authoritarian, narcissistic, stiff, robotic to one person can be seen by another person as disciplined, mentally focused, strong leadership, sense of self-worth, committed, efficient. My gripe with Germans is that they sometimes tend to over-engineer things, i.e. make things more complex than they really need to be.

Yeah, I am a car mechanic from Asia and enjoy Japanese cars the most but currently in England working on all the euro stuff and I agree with the over engineering on behalf of the germans but the French...

 

[Blaze]

What foreign language have you chosen to learn? Why?

I learned Spanish since there are so many Spanish speakers here in San Diego. We are on the Mexican border here. Took about 2 years to speak it well. It's opened up a whole new array of foods and people and culture.

Learning a language is a great and very rewarding investment. Learning Mandarin now just to keep my brain stimulated and working well.

 

[Dr.Winston O'Boogie]

Thai, because I fell in love with the place many years ago and now live here. It's strange because the language teachers at school told me I was "No good with languages". With hindsight I can see now that I just had no interest in the languages they wanted to teach me and once I had decided that I want to learn Thai I loved the process.

For Westerners it's an alien type of language because it's tonal, the tone of a word or the length of a vowel will almost certainly totally change the meaning. I also learned to read and write Thai script, essential really if you wish to progress above a basic level. Thai is actually an alphabet albeit one a lot more complicated than ours, consonants have classes and vowels have lengths which dictate the tone(s) of a word.

It's not all hard, although their grammar is different to ours there are no plurals or tenses to learn, these things are conveyed by adding words before or after. It's been very rewarding and it does provide an insight into a different culture which is something I suspect is true of many languages.

 

[Blaze]

Thai, because I fell in love with the place many years ago and now live here. It's strange because the language teachers at school told me I was "No good with languages". With hindsight I can see now that I just had no interest in the languages they wanted to teach me and once I had decided that I want to learn Thai I loved the process.

For Westerners it's an alien type of language because it's tonal, the tone of a word or the length of a vowel will almost certainly totally change the meaning. I also learned to read and write Thai script, essential really if you wish to progress above a basic level. Thai is actually an alphabet albeit one a lot more complicated than ours, consonants have classes and vowels have lengths which dictate the tone(s) of a word.

It's not all hard, although their grammar is different to ours there are no plurals or tenses to learn, these things are conveyed by adding words before or after. It's been very rewarding and it does provide an insight into a different culture which is something I suspect is true of many languages.

The Thai culture fascinates me. Among the places I visited I really loved Phuket. Visited there in the 1980's. Beautiful place and people and food. One of my favorite places second only to China. Philippines are very cool also.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I speak two fluently, one I manage a conversation with, and one I mostly forgot. I have decided that I am going to learn Russian if I get my money and life situation stable. I love near Russia, and I practice a Russian martial art called Systema and Russia has the best tantra teaching.

 

[Frankdee20]

I grew up speaking a variant of Sicilian, and still do to this day with my parents.... Sicilian resembles Greek and Arabic more so than the Latin emphasis of Italian.... I’d venture to believe learning a similar language may be okay to do for me

 

[Inaut]

I grew up speaking a variant of Sicilian growing up, and still do to this day with my parents.... Sicilian resembles Greek and Arabic more so than the Latin emphasis of Italian.... I’d venture to believe learning a similar language may be okay to do for me

Hey Malaka! Kidding but that’s all you need to know how to say in Greek :)

 

[Frankdee20]

Hey Malaka! Kidding but that’s all you need to know how to say in Greek :)

Lol ... Yes I learned all the bad words ... worked with a few Greeks

 

[TomS]

I recommend Hungarian. President Biden likes Hungary, as Repr. Lantos (died some year ago), showed him Hungary in deep details
Repr Lantos was born in Hungary, but as his family was Jewish, he had to leave Hungary before Nazis occupied the country.
Hungarian language is special, it is not similar to any language, it has lot of accents, grammar is special, wording also, however, use Latin letters.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

I really like Mandarin, not for the sounds, but for the chinese characters. I did memorize a bunch of them( thousands), and I can read simple sentences, but I'm still far from fluent, especially considering that I'm not good at understanding the spoken language. I'm a little rusty, since I haven't practiced in almost 2 years. In terms of sound, I think Japanese and Russian sound very cool.

I used an app called Skritter to help memorize the characters and words. It has an algorythm which presents the character to you after a certain amount of time based on wheather or not you got it right. Quite fun and very good for the memory.

My profile "surname" is actually Mandarin for "foreign", simply because I would be one if I went to a chinese-speaking country( not much thought went into that idea lol).

 

[nikotrope]

I’m native French and I don’t really like the language. It’s too flat and it’s a language that isn’t very flexible. What I mean by that is neologisms are often verbose or just weird.

I learned German in school and even now I don’t like how it sounds and still struggle with pronunciation.

I started learning Japanese a few years ago and I love it. I always loved how it sounded and I lived there for a couple of years. It was also a good challenge because it’s grammatically very different and learning all the characters takes a lot of time. But one thing I like about the writing system it’s that you might be able to understand a word you don’t know about because you know the characters.

 

[Dr.Winston O'Boogie]

The Thai culture fascinates me. Among the places I visited I really loved Phuket. Visited there in the 1980's. Beautiful place and people and food. One of my favorite places second only to China. Philippines are very cool also.

You wouldn't believe how much it's built up since the 80's. On my first few visits (also in the 80's) Bangkok was a very flat city with no really tall buildings, now it looks like New York.

Despite the 'modernisation' the culture is still unique and most of the Country is tourist free even outside of the current situation except the main tourist centres.

 

[Logan-]

Great replies so far, thanks everyone for sharing.

I’ll share with you Mark Twain’s famous essay on German language. It’s a good read.

There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind of person. I have shown that the German language needs reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it. At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions. Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but I have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me.

In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case. It confuses the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the Dative case, except he discover it by accident--and then he does not know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he is going to get out of it again. The Dative case is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it.

In the next place, I would move the Verb further up to the front. You may load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present German range--you only cripple it. So I insist that this important part of speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye.

Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous ways. [4]

Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute them accordingly to the will of the creator. This as a tribute of respect, if nothing else.

Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel.

Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration. This sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. They are, therefore, an offense, and should be discarded.

Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis, the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. I would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. Infractions of this law should be punishable with death.

And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG, with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. This would simplify the language.

I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and important changes. These are perhaps all I could be expected to name for nothing; but there are other suggestions which I can and will make in case my proposed application shall result in my being formally employed by the government in the work of reforming the language.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

https://www.viaggio-in-germania.de/awful-german-language.pdf

 

[Blaze]

You wouldn't believe how much it's built up since the 80's. On my first few visits (also in the 80's) Bangkok was a very flat city with no really tall buildings, now it looks like New York.

Despite the 'modernisation' the culture is still unique and most of the Country is tourist free even outside of the current situation except the main tourist centres.

If I ever get back there you can be my tour guide, lol

 

[Logan-]

Thai, because I fell in love with the place many years ago and now live here. It's strange because the language teachers at school told me I was "No good with languages". With hindsight I can see now that I just had no interest in the languages they wanted to teach me and once I had decided that I want to learn Thai I loved the process.

For Westerners it's an alien type of language because it's tonal, the tone of a word or the length of a vowel will almost certainly totally change the meaning. I also learned to read and write Thai script, essential really if you wish to progress above a basic level. Thai is actually an alphabet albeit one a lot more complicated than ours, consonants have classes and vowels have lengths which dictate the tone(s) of a word.

It's not all hard, although their grammar is different to ours there are no plurals or tenses to learn, these things are conveyed by adding words before or after. It's been very rewarding and it does provide an insight into a different culture which is something I suspect is true of many languages.

What made you fell in love with the place and culture?

 

[Logan-]

Has Ray Peat ever said anything about how he learned to speak Russian and Spanish (by himself, working with a tutor, in an institution etc.) and why he chose to learn them?

 

[Dr.Winston O'Boogie]

What made you fell in love with the place and culture?

In many ways it’s the opposite of the U.K. which is where I come from. It’s a hot climate, food, transport and accommodation are all cheap. I’d never seen a whole coconut before my first trip there in the 80’s and then next thing I knew I was on tropical beaches just full of them.

I love the adventure of it all, jungles, caves, snakes and wild animals can still be seen here, I have even seen and photographed a wild Indo Chinese Tiger here. These days I make YouTube travel videos here, it’s small but heading in the right direction. I just seem to have adventures here wherever I go.

The attitude of the people is so different here, they’re not at all absorbed with world news and seem the happier for it, ignorance really can be bliss. I think Buddhism is a bit to do with their outlook on life, they don’t need much to be happy and don’t have the fear of death to the same level as most Westerners. It’s not all great, they can be arrogant and even racist but it’s never boring.

The food is fantastic here and there cannot be many places better for fruit. I feel free to be myself and at home here.

 

[Logan-]

In many ways it’s the opposite of the U.K. which is where I come from. It’s a hot climate, food, transport and accommodation are all cheap. I’d never seen a whole coconut before my first trip there in the 80’s and then next thing I knew I was on tropical beaches just full of them.

I love the adventure of it all, jungles, caves, snakes and wild animals can still be seen here, I have even seen and photographed a wild Indo Chinese Tiger here. These days I make YouTube travel videos here, it’s small but heading in the right direction. I just seem to have adventures here wherever I go.

The attitude of the people is so different here, they’re not at all absorbed with world news and seem the happier for it, ignorance really can be bliss. I think Buddhism is a bit to do with their outlook on life, they don’t need much to be happy and don’t have the fear of death to the same level as most Westerners. It’s not all great, they can be arrogant and even racist but it’s never boring.

The food is fantastic here and there cannot be many places better for fruit. I feel free to be myself and at home here.

Seems good. Do you do any work there, or just having good times?

I have read some articles about how SE Asian countries have a lot of economic potential and good to invest right now (excepting the covid nonsense), do you agree? How does the relatively rapid economic development affect that environment, culture and society, interpersonal relationships, economic inequality, politics etc.?

How did you learn their language? Are you an advanced level speaker of the language right now? How’s the “high culture” there, do you like it? Can you find good/interesting things to read in Thai? How are cinema, theatre, music, visual arts etc. there?