army1987 comments on Learn A New Language! - Less Wrong

3 [deleted] 20 May 2012 11:09PM

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Comment author: danlucraft 21 May 2012 09:33:20AM 1 point [-]

I can't say I will never live in a non-English speaking place, but since I have no particular plans to at the moment, I have no reason to learn any particular language out of hundreds, either.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2012 08:57:01AM 0 points [-]

As I said elsewhere, learning a language is likely to make it easier to learn another one later on; also, some languages are more influential than others, so if you choose to learn German or French (if you're in Europe) or Spanish (in America) you have a non-negligible probability of finding the very language you chose useful in the future.

Comment author: danlucraft 29 May 2012 11:15:55AM 0 points [-]

So, the plan is: invest 1000 hours now, so that when you actually need to learn a language you only have to invest 800 hours then?

Anyway, I hear you saying that you have intrinsic motivation here, so these kind of calculations aren't really relevant to you, which I understand.