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.

    • The_Empty_Tuple@kbin.social
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      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
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        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
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          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?

          • kani
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            1 year ago

            Some from recent memory:

            • Real Humans (Äkta Människor) tv show, I liked the UK version a bit more
            • Young Royals, tv show about a young gay prince
            • Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, a heartbreaking miniseries dealing with Aids epidemic
            • Raspberry Boat Refugee, a movie about a Finnish man who believes he should’ve been born Swedish
            • Glowing Stars, a movie about a girl looking after her mom who has cancer
            • Stormkärs Maja, a miniseries on the hard life on a tiny island
            • Roy Andersson Also has a lot of fun absurdist comedies
            • Also movies/miniseries based on Astrid Lindgren books are sweet and nostalgic and despite being aimed for children

            I think those might be easy enough to find online depending on where you look.

    • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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      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
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        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
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          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
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            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.

            • garrettw87@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              If you’re curious…
              “Mi” - pronoun meaning I/me
              “lernis” - learned (The root is “lern-”. The following rules apply to all verbs: “-i” is the infinitive form, “-is” is past tense, “-as” is present tense, “-os” is future tense, “-us” is conditional tense (kind of like could/would), and “-u” is imperative/command form.)
              “Esperanton” - obviously Esperanto, but the “-n” suffix denotes a direct object.
              “ĉar” - because
              “volas” - (verb, present tense) want
              “havi” - (verb, infinitive) to have
              “amikojn” - (noun, direct object, plural) - root is “amik-”, the “-o” suffix denotes a noun, “-j” makes it plural, and then the “-n” for direct object again
              “en” - in
              “ĉiaj” - all
              “la” - the (this is the only article in the language; incidentally, there is no indefinite article)
              “landoj”- countries (“-o” is noun, “-j” is plural)
              “de” - of (there are actually multiple words that can mean “of” but that’s another topic entirely)
              “mondo” - world

              The letter “ĉ” is pronounced like “ch”; Esperanto doesn’t do two-letter phonemes because one of its foundational principles is one letter = one sound.

            • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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              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.”