this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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You would be if Europe was the entire world.
op would be conversational with a significant part of the world, and they're not to blame for colonialism. just by learning spanish, english and portuguese they would be able to talk to anyone south of rio grande in the u.s., and talk to some former british colonies in africa and asia. put some russian and french and you would be left with just perhaps middle east, east and southeast asia.
knowing that and learning some arabic and chinese (throw in some language of some east or southeast asian country if they want) and there's not much left, but to discuss how colonialism brought the world to this situation.
Most countries speak English so no need for all the fluff in that case. Spanish and French are the next most relevant. The rest is very much euro-centric.
My biggest gripe is that all Euro languages have a shared Latin and Greek origin so OP's not really branching out to entirely different language systems.
i understand your side, but that's up to op. personally for me i was thinking about learning a native local language, perhaps tupi or nheengatu, and one from the african diaspora such as yoruba, kimbundu or kikongo. but that's on me, and that's on op too, regardless of what we think. it's not a particularly picky topic in my opinion.
What do you mean by all Euro languges having a shared Latin and Greek origin?
I'm no expert/linguist, but I thought Germanic, Slavic, Romance (Latin) and Uralic were completely separate branches of the Indo-European language tree, having very little to do with eachother.
Cheers
I was moreso referring to their alphabet and pronounciations but a lot of them such as German have a hefty amount of Latin terms which got incorporated. I doubt many Germans these days would understand original Germanic.
They do have their own roots but you get a head start in Europe by pronouncing Latin words in whatever regional accent is availble. Polish and Norwegian likely less but OP is still at a beginner level for those.
But for example adding Japanese, Chinese or Arabic adds a whole new alphabet and experience where there is virtually no Latin base to start from