I'm a native English speaker, I started studying Russian at age 19, and I was fluent enough to converse with native speakers in a non-annoying way by age 21. Granted, circumstantial evidence from peers does suggest I'm something of an outlier. I've also found that learning a third, fourth, etc. language is much easier once you've already become fluent in a second language. Indeed, when I studied subsequent languages, I would usually take my notes in Russian, to cut the native-language-favoring wiring in my brain out of the process to the extent possible.
I agree to a degree about the practicality of learning the languages, with the caveats that a) there are interesting people to interact with in the world that do not speak English, and knowing more languages expands the set of interesting people one may interact with, and b)if you enjoy reading, literature is generally much better in the original than in translation.
I'm a native English speaker, I started studying Russian at age 19, and I was fluent enough to converse with native speakers in a non-annoying way by age 21.
That's a pretty impressive accomplishment. How much time did you dedicate to studying Russian during that period?
I agree that literature is much better in the original, but learning a language so well that you can appreciate good literary style in it is a very ambitious goal, far more difficult than just learning it well enough to converse competently.
Apologies for the wasted time spent reading and replying to this post. Please disregard it.
I've been feeling non-awesome for a long time. I don't know if anyone else here feels the same way, but I'm going to assume that at least a few people do. I want to correct this horrible deficiency.
We already have the LW meetups in a lot of places, monthly in some places and weekly in others. I've gone to a few, and they're interesting and I get to meet a lot of very smart people (and get intimidated by them)... but mostly all we've done is talk and sometimes go and eat at a restaurant. I want more than this!
We already talk, we need an action-based meetup. I want to propose another kind of meetup, the Insufficiently Awesome meetup. It should aim to make us good at baseline things like fitness, social skills, strategy, and reflexes, and to make us very good at specialized awesome things like master-level chess/go/shogi, public speaking, various sports, dancing, making music, making art.
I think this meetup should be daily, though not everyone would want to go every day. Nonetheless, we should have something happening every day that we're not spending talking. The goal shouldn't be just to be fit in different situations, but to instead become totally awesome.
Is there anyone else that feels the same? If so, what things do you think we need to learn for the baseline, and what things should we get very good at?