I honestly think everyone should learn a second language or even a third, a fourth one. It's a great way to know about other people's ideas, cultures, traditions, etc... It can also avoid the stupidity caused by arrogance and ignorance.
@sim @thatbrickster I see. In my opinion, the most precious thing about language learning is the experience rather than the outcome. Even though you don't become fluent in the end, you can still learn something different.
@sim @thatbrickster @dinoallosaurus you can't learn a language if you want to know it, you can only learn it if you are ok with not knowing it. Even with your native, from your very first words to the last, there were many and will always be some things you didn't and will never know, you just always have been and will be ok with it. WTF did I just write...
@sim
I probably phrased it the worst way possible, but what I mean is even that is too much. Learning your first language you don't care what it all means, or whether you understand or are understood. You just listen and repeat and later indirectly discover meaning. You are also absolutely disinterested in its structure, it is not curious or fascinating, you view it in the most benign and primitive way (as in some subconscious part of your mind it actually is unremarkably simple to you). Now, it is of course difficult to revert back to a mindset of a child as an adult, not enough patience (of your own and your peers), but it's still a useful attitude to have. There should be no goal, and you should be all sorts of wrong and pointless and not care in the slightest.
@thatbrickster @dinoallosaurus
@sim
Yeah, very difficult to do on purpose, and can never be exactly the same. Still can experiment in that direction. Maybe expose yourself to the language in some comfortable way daily, just listen and repeat the phrases you like. Don't translate words, only sentences/phrases, and only after you're somewhat comfortable saying them, as kind of a substitute for (acceleration of) contextual clues/explanations. Learn reading/writing only after getting more or less comfortable with speech. Difficult without a tutor/friend who will practice it with you diligently, but on the other hand can take as long as you like if you can get into the "don't care" (in it for the lulz?...!) mindset.
For me it was circumstantial, so I'm lucky that didn't need to motivate myself in any way, but I certainly never cared much about the language itself or knowing it. Initially I would even avoid it whenever I could, being thoroughly convinced that I will never understand it.
