Learning a new language (English) was decisive in my life to fill a lot of type 1, type 2 and 3 holes as you presented on this post.
In 2013 “I felt” I should learn English. I didn’t have a clear goal on doing it, but “it seemed important on the long-term”, but I couldn’t explain why it would be important to care about really learn another language.
In 2016 I heard from a YouTuber from my country talking about AI. My goals changed completely, and I could only find real quality discussions about AI or state-of-the-art information in English.
Then it came programming, blockchain, decision theory, etc, etc. Subjects that I only started caring because I learned English and found really good English content about these subjects.
This post makes me wonder what would happen if suddenly I started to learn Chinese.
English is the most important, most useful language to know. It is the language of business, science and technology. It is the closest thing humanity has ever had to a universal language.
Chinese is the second most important language in the world to know. It is, in a different sense, the closest thing humanity has ever had to a universal written language. Here are some ideas you might get from learning Chinese.
Your ideas of “center of the world”, “civilization” and “humanity” shift from Europe and the Americas to East Asia. This is not the same as a global internationalist perspective. China becomes the hive of humanity everything else revolves around, like how the Earth is the center of the universe.
Non-phonetic writing systems make sense. You realize how little living literary tradition survives in languages written using alphabets because texts become unreadable in mere centuries as the spoken language evolves. You develop an appreciation for calligraphy. You can read more Japanese than most 外人.
You develop an intuitive feel for the clan system, a semi-artificial method of extending family connections.
These points really make me update my beliefs on the importance of learning Chinese. Thanks for that.
What am I missing by not speaking Portuguese?
Brazilian speaks with the body, so you are not missing that much. Haha just kidding (although it’s true that body language plays a big role here). But there are 250 million total portuguese speakers, and by just knowing Portuguese you will understand Spanish easily, because there is 89% of lexical similarity. I can understand Spanish with no problems and I never studied it. If you know how to search, there is a vast and extensive Brazilian music that you wouldn’t like to miss. The literature written in Portuguese remains untranslated, except for very few authors, so you would be able to read very good books (if you like certain genres). Also, Brazil is about half of South America, and is a fantastically interesting place to travel. When new people come here, the reception is warm. Music, cooking, sports and memes here are a real thing. Knowing Portuguese would make you able to connect with our culture and you would be able to access very good content on a lot of subjects. But I am fully biased and mostly looking into the bubble (mathematics, physics and computation) and you don’t lose much by just using English sources for these subjects.
For example, this channel is specialized in non verbal behavior analysis and I never found anything better than that on any language. This channel is the best on musical content (how to play drums, guitar, acoustic guitar, etc, how to sing, compose, etc). This on comedy, this on history and science. I mean, if you keep looking, you will always find a lot of good content on very different subjects. You will miss all of this by not knowing Portuguese, as with any language.
If you look on the science side, you can check Brazil here (tables from page 4~9).
There is no good translator from Portuguese to any language yet, and your best tool to date would be DeepL, in case you need to translate Portuguese info to English.
Learning a new language (English) was decisive in my life to fill a lot of type 1, type 2 and 3 holes as you presented on this post.
In 2013 “I felt” I should learn English. I didn’t have a clear goal on doing it, but “it seemed important on the long-term”, but I couldn’t explain why it would be important to care about really learn another language.
In 2016 I heard from a YouTuber from my country talking about AI. My goals changed completely, and I could only find real quality discussions about AI or state-of-the-art information in English.
Then it came programming, blockchain, decision theory, etc, etc. Subjects that I only started caring because I learned English and found really good English content about these subjects.
This post makes me wonder what would happen if suddenly I started to learn Chinese.
English is the most important, most useful language to know. It is the language of business, science and technology. It is the closest thing humanity has ever had to a universal language.
Chinese is the second most important language in the world to know. It is, in a different sense, the closest thing humanity has ever had to a universal written language. Here are some ideas you might get from learning Chinese.
Your ideas of “center of the world”, “civilization” and “humanity” shift from Europe and the Americas to East Asia. This is not the same as a global internationalist perspective. China becomes the hive of humanity everything else revolves around, like how the Earth is the center of the universe.
Non-phonetic writing systems make sense. You realize how little living literary tradition survives in languages written using alphabets because texts become unreadable in mere centuries as the spoken language evolves. You develop an appreciation for calligraphy. You can read more Japanese than most 外人.
You develop an intuitive feel for the clan system, a semi-artificial method of extending family connections.
You realize Western castles were tiny and crude.
You think in longer historical time horizons.
You take it for granted that the natural state of things (historically-speaking) is for China to be the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.
You discover lots of business opportunities.
What am I missing by not speaking Portuguese?
These points really make me update my beliefs on the importance of learning Chinese. Thanks for that.
Brazilian speaks with the body, so you are not missing that much. Haha just kidding (although it’s true that body language plays a big role here). But there are 250 million total portuguese speakers, and by just knowing Portuguese you will understand Spanish easily, because there is 89% of lexical similarity. I can understand Spanish with no problems and I never studied it. If you know how to search, there is a vast and extensive Brazilian music that you wouldn’t like to miss. The literature written in Portuguese remains untranslated, except for very few authors, so you would be able to read very good books (if you like certain genres). Also, Brazil is about half of South America, and is a fantastically interesting place to travel. When new people come here, the reception is warm. Music, cooking, sports and memes here are a real thing. Knowing Portuguese would make you able to connect with our culture and you would be able to access very good content on a lot of subjects. But I am fully biased and mostly looking into the bubble (mathematics, physics and computation) and you don’t lose much by just using English sources for these subjects.
For example, this channel is specialized in non verbal behavior analysis and I never found anything better than that on any language. This channel is the best on musical content (how to play drums, guitar, acoustic guitar, etc, how to sing, compose, etc). This on comedy, this on history and science. I mean, if you keep looking, you will always find a lot of good content on very different subjects. You will miss all of this by not knowing Portuguese, as with any language.
If you look on the science side, you can check Brazil here (tables from page 4~9).
There is no good translator from Portuguese to any language yet, and your best tool to date would be DeepL, in case you need to translate Portuguese info to English.