What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?

i feel like this is a descent question i guess.

  • kani@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Learning a new language. You learn a bit about how languages work, understand other cultures a bit better, usually learn new vocabulary for your native language, understand the relationship between different languages, learn the roots of loan words and generally helps your brain stay healthy, even by only studying the basics.

      • The_Empty_Tuple@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Not OP, but I’ve asked myself this as well. I think it depends on where you live and what you want out of your language learning experience. If your goal is to learn something more useful in everyday life and you live in the southern US, Spanish is a great option. If you’re from Canada, French is probably the most useful. German and Mandarin are useful in the business world, but the latter is significantly harder to learn. If you’re not worried about maximizing the utility of what you learn, Norwegian is considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers, and let’s be real, Norway is awesome.

        It’s more important that you stick with whatever you choose though. That’s the part I’ve struggled with.

        • kani@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          To be honest I’m not a native English speaker so your advice is probably more useful anyway. My husband is British and has studied plenty of languages, finding Swedish and Norwegian definitely the easiest to pick up. Romance languages have more complicated grammar but you’ll find a lot more TV and movies to watch to casually pick up a bit more of the language, which I find useful because I only speak English as well as I do from watching a lot of TV (first with subs) when I was younger.

          • wafflez@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            do you have any swedish tv shows or movies you could recommend? the more the merrier please, or any resources for it at all?

      • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Esperanto is reckoned an easy pickup, has speakers globally, and will improve your default in most romance languages. The community is also quite nice, in my experience.

        • randomperson@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          Esperanto seems to be pretty useless to invest so much time into learning it. Wouldn’t be learning “normal” language more beneficial anyway?

          • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            Depends on your goals. If you’re going somewhere with one language to spend time, or especially value a particular language, studying that language makes sense. If you want access to a global network of the sort of people who would pick up a conlang intended to be a universal second language, one speakers of can be found anywhere, Esperanto’s your pick.

            Mi lernis Esperanton ĉar mi volas havi amikojn en ĉiaj la landoj de la mondo.

            • randomperson@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              I am Polish native that can easily read Ukrainian, English and also some German and I have no clue what that sentence means in Esperanto :D. I can only guess that “lernis” is probably something like “learning” and “mondo” refers to “world” (guess based purely on ‘Le Monde’ - French newspaper). Rest looks like some random Lithuanian stuff. I don’t think knowledge of Esperanto could give me any advantage when traveling across Europe. Idea is cool but to be honest English is the new lingua franca and I think that’s good because it’s easy to pick up and already widespread.

              • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                what lauguage would you recommend for people who only know english?

                You weren’t the target audience for my initial comment.

                “I learned Esperanto because I want to have friends in all the countries of the world.”