Choosing a language to learn

[Logan-]

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.

In this interview, starting at around the 107th minute, when asked about where he would go/escape, Ray Peat talked very positively about the indigenous populations of Mexico... “there are areas in Mexico where people are extremely open and humanistic because of the nature of the original culture there shaping, completely overwhelming the sadistic Spanish-imposed culture.” He says there are probably many areas through Latin America where the indigenous populations have won over like that.

I agree with RP that Latin American countries, societies, cultures have very interesting, very open-minded, lively, positive, flexible, humanistic, adaptive, playful sides.

Uruguay, especially, seems very nice to live too.

I haven’t decided which language to choose yet, going back and forth between Spanish, French, and German.

I am also considering learning Ancient Greek instead, because I like that culture and would like to be able to read their works in their language, to have a better understanding; but people have commented that Ancient Greek is a very hard language to learn, and on top of that there aren’t much learning materials for self-studying, and the language is dead so there’s no communication aspect to it, nor any aspect of potential financial gain can be there for it.

It seems Mandarin and other such languages and cultures are going to develop rapidly and become very important in the future due to rise of China and Asia in general; but I don’t know, they don’t sound good to my ear. The same is true, to a lesser degree, for Spanish for me.

 

[Starship]

English. I'm from Russia and I was forced to learn English after moving to states

 

[Logan-]

Life and Culture in Latin America?

I know “Latin America” is big and diverse, but it seems to be a different and interesting part of the world. Ray Peat spends a lot of time in Mexico, he has talked and written about life and culture in Latin America positively in various contexts. I sometimes think about learning Spanish very...

raypeatforum.com

 

[Vajra]

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?

Yeah I'd like to know more about his history studying linguistics. It used to be his major, before biology, if I'm not mistaken. He's probably had a lot to say about it - his newsletters? But as far as Spanish goes, learning the basics and living and studying in Mexico for long periods was probably the long and short of it.
I'm a native English speaker and probably owing to that, I like germanic syntax/morphology, but Greek morphemes. And as time passes I eventually find every language to sound pretty nice.
But if we're talking about location/pragmatic purposes? I mean I'd recommend one get as fluent as possible in English. Mandarin could have some benefits if we enter Cold War II.

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

What kind of dishes do you have in mind? Because on one hand when I think Thai food, I think of a tropical paradise, and on the other hand I think of extremely oily street food - but both are probably really cheap.
I think if it weren't for the crazy rainforest wildlife (Buddhist monks meditating in the jungle simply use compassion and fearlessness when encountered by a deadly creature) Southeast Asia would definitely be on my radar, since the tropical climate is of course ideal for food and the Buddhist culture is very special.

 

[Logan-]

I think, in general, these are some of the most important languages to learn:

Chinese, Russian, Spanish, German.

 

[changeling188]

Preface is that I'm just suggesting these based on aesthetic qualities, not practicality or usage. I know English and French and Australasian creoles and learnt Indonesian and German while at school.

I like Malay and Bahasa Indonesia. They have a beautiful sound and all things considered are quite easy for an English speaker to start learning (no gender cases, plurals done by duplication). I appreciate languages without a gender or where duplication suffices for a plural case. My boss and his family speak Levantine Arabic and it's very beautiful to listen too, but difficult to familiarise.

i have recently learned Tok Pisin/Bislama/Pijin (mutually intelligible to some degree). They are a fusion of Australian English with (subject of debate) Melanesian grammar and syntax with some German, French, Portuguese and indigenous influence. For example, bislama is a corruption of the French bêche-la-mer (sea cucumber).

In Tok Pisin, the word for faster is hariap, broken is bagarap, call is singaut. also the reduced vocabulary means a word can be used for a number of ideas like vot for vote (verb) or election (noun). It is possible to learn fluently in six months and the countries in which it is used are some of the most fascinating to me.

The limitations of creoles makes me both appreciate English, but also understand the humour or magic of a more limited, more referential way of speaking and communicating. It is very charming, and heartwarming even, to see how a language was developed out of communicative necessity so is bare-bones and deliberately open-ended, and is still very much in development because it's speakers are not fully familiarised with modernity.

I like the guttural sound of Dutch and Afrikaans as well, and Afrikaans has amazing swear words and phrases. i think one was: jou mammie naai vir bakstene om jou sissie se hoerhuis te bou (your mum ***** for bricks to build your sister's brothel).

On the other hand: I always found French and German to be overrated in their expressive qualities, or that this was a result of a kind of English inferiority complex that came post-The Norman Conquest.

English is very expressive, and a great language for satire or humour. I think there's a reason English overtook French as the lingua franca of global discourse, both because U.S.A. emerged as a superpower and the film and television industry's global reach, but also because English strengthened and complexified through contact with other cultures and through globalisation whereas both French and German weakened and began to incorporate more and more English words or concepts. Spanish also strengthened across the world, and took on more regionally specific forms which interacted with musical cultures to great effect (reggaeton, dance styles of Latin America)

Knowing French, I find the language to be quite limited compared to English in its descriptive capabilities. Specifically listening to music I notice languages with hard consonant sounds and articulated gaps between sounds suit the percussive qualities of drums, piano, guitar and other instruments much better.

Of course French is very flowing in its sound and romantic in that sense, but so is Spanish and the latter is more widespread and useful.

 

[changeling188]

Can anyone explain to me why grammatical gender is useful in their language?

 

[Warrior]

Mandarin is going to become the next global language as power travels round the world and is headed back home to the East once the West collapses after its planned destruction over the next few decades. For that alone its worth learning as an investment as early adopters will flourish.

Its a tonal language so a lot more subtle and complex than English. It also facilitates bi-lateral activation of the brain unlike phonological tongues and this is also the underlying reason why native speakers are so good at maths. The short titles they use for numbers in comparison to other languages allows them to cram more into their working memories and the process of acquisition for the glyphs work hand in hand to create these results.

English is a very, very weird language and is saturated with occult elements not in your best interests but if its all you speak you'll never see.

Linguistics and the brain is a fascinating area of research for anyone who wishes to know more about themselves and the world as it stands as a man with more than one tongue can be said to possess another Soul aka POV/frame of mind.

 

[DBCoast]

I’ve been learning Latin for the past few months and really enjoy it.