[0xmarcin]

I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city. When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish. Even having an appointment with english speaking doctor is not a problem. OTOH when you adventure outside of big cities you suddenly find yourself in a land where nobody can understand English very well (in that case it's better to chat with teens than adults, most pupils have B2-level English at school).

That being said I know a person that spend 3 years in Denmark and they do not even attempt to learn Danish. Their argument was that the language is very niche, and they are not sure for how long they will stay there. If I was in their place I would probably at least learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance.

I think the real problem here is that learning a language is a lot of work and requires a lot of efford. If you live comfortably with English they why to put extra effort for something that will provide little or not benefit at all.

[AdamN]

I got my hair cut by a Greek barber in Copenhagen. He had been there for 12 years and didn't know any Danish. Somebody came in speaking Danish and he said "I'm sorry but I don't speak Danish" and the rest was in English. For many English speakers it's their third or fourth language and the value of Danish is pretty limited - even for a Copenhagen resident. Obviously, that Greek barber would probably love to speak Danish but as an adult, even a decade of effort won't get him to the level any Danish person can speak English.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

> but as an adult, even a decade of effort won't get him to the level any Danish person can speak English.

Children don't have any special ability to pick up languages, but they do have certain advantages: they aren't afraid to make mistakes, they are fully immersed in the language from the moment they wake up, they have no responsibilities like jobs and other adult stuff and they have people (parents, school, teachers, family) constantly talking to them at a level they can comprehend while gently pointing out their mistakes. If you put that barber in the same environment he will be fluent in no time.

[ido]

I believe they do have an advantage, mental plasticity is higher in children (especially young children).

[SkyBelow]

>Children don't have any special ability to pick up languages

They do. One example I recall from a neurology class is that the auditory cortex of a young child is able to differentiate more sounds than that of an adult. As a child ages, they lose the ability to distinguish sounds not common in their native language. The inability to distinguish the sounds also applies to the inability to tell the sounds apart when speaking it which decreases their ability to produce the correct sound. There is some research showing it is possible to relearn the ability to differentiate, but this requires training specifically in identifying sounds, not training in learning a language.

This doesn't mean fluency as an adult is impossible, and there are many actions that an adult could take to better align their learning environment to that of a child's which would improve their learning, but we should recognize there are some difference that cannot be replicated in adults.

[makeitdouble]

You’re right that one might only need English to live in a given country.

But then how much insight has that person into how other people think (they can’t hold a conversation with the vast majority of non english speaking people), or access to local news and studies...

I think many Spanish speaking countries are in the same boat: not speaking the local language means you end up in a foreign friendly bubble with limited access to anything that didn’t get picked up by that english speaking sphere, which will often include the really interesting stuff.

[Pelayu]

As someone who moved to Spain I would not say that you can get by with only English. Outside of tourism barely anyone speaks it really.

[peoplefromibiza]

> I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city

that might be true in Europe (not everywhere though) or in the US, it is certainly not true in Japan.

There is also a fatigue associated to speaking English for non native speakers that often leads to being identified as the "foreigner" and in practice you end up hanging out only with other English speaking "foreigners".

You also miss a lot about the local culture, because the language barrier forces you to only visit places where people speak English.

It is like living in Poland and never eat pierogi.

> When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish

Poland is good (but not great) in that sense, a lot of people speak English, many of them don't speak it well enough to actually hold a meaningful conversation with a native speaker. I understand them as a non native speaker, but I also recognize many of the mistakes in the construction of the sentences they make (and that I make as well).

But that's not true in general, not even in rich and well educated Europe

See

https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/English_speakers_Eu...

Now the real advantage of speaking some local language is knowing a lingua franca.

It's not uncommon here in Italy to witness a conversation between immigrants coming from wildly different backgrounds (say, for example, North Africa and Eastern Europe) happening in Italian. Their version of Italian, of course, but it's good enough to communicate and they also can practice the language they actually need to interact with Italians.

Of course it takes a lot of time to learn a new language, especially if the language doesn't even have the same alphabet you already know, but after 10 years I would expect to actually have learned at least the basics of it.

[danjac]

There's a difference between, say, a tech worker not making an effort to learn the language because they can get by in English, and someone whose actual job description is to understand the politics and culture of their host country not bothering to learn it. In the second case it looks like professional negligence.

[spaceman_2020]

English language is really a superpower. I speak a little Spanish and was chatting up with an Argentine couple in Thailand. They don't speak much English and were telling me stories of being stuck and lost and swindled while traveling abroad.

I've managed to travel to 30+ countries and never felt out of place because most places will somehow accommodate English speakers.

The only place I felt a little bit of language hostility was in Russia. Moscow was probably the least English-friendly major city I've ever been to - but that makes sense from a historical perspective.

[Pelayu]

I think there’s a very big distinction between the usefulness of English for travel vs living in a country. Sure, English is a great for tourism, but outside of that I would not say it’s as useful as a lot of English speakers like to say. As someone who moved to Spain, I would say it’s pretty much impossible to get by (living) here with only English.

[LatteLazy]

I think you are correct about "need". However when I was in Japan, people were very patient and absolutely thrilled when I inflicted my limited and low quality Japanese on them. It made it an excellent environment to learn in.

[cr1895]

>learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance.

I don’t think Denmark is the best example here. English competency is _extremely_ high and Danish is quite a difficult language to grasp (as far as I know as an A2/B1 Swedish learner).

[silvestrov]

Danish is not difficult to grasp as it is mostly a mix of English and German words.

Pronunciation is a very difficult ballgame as Danish has sounds not in any of those languages. E.g. stød: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stød

[djtango]

It's about making the effort to assimilate with your host country. Embracing and empathising with their way of life which begins with learning their language.

I've always found it frustrating whenever I meet people who don't try to integrate with the country they're living in - both when I've lived at home and in foreign countries...

[_benedict]

Some people are really bad at language, and depending on the context it’s probably fine to let them off the hook. I once participated in a French class in Paris with a guy whose wife was French, and he was utterly hopeless. I’m not sure he was ever going to develop the skill, even though he tried. Though I hope I’m wrong about that.

I think a journalist writing about a country is a special case though, that doesn’t get affordancee.

[Aaronmacaron]

I don't really believe this. Of course some people have more of a tendency to be good at languages than others but I think the guy from you story probably didn't try hard enough or maybe had a completely wrong approach. There are many countries where virtually all people speak a foreign language which shows that it is possible for almost anybody to pick up another language.

[_benedict]

I really dislike the “didn’t try hard enough” angle. He seemed to be trying, he really wanted to be able to settle in to a productive life with his wife there. It’s lacking in empathy to assume you have all the relevant facts to pass judgement.

Countries where people are multilingual from a young age clearly have some major differences to those where they are not, and even in those countries many people are not multilingual.

[notch656c]

There is a theory that children have a "language acquisition device" that goes from muscular brawn to a flubby dough-boy with age in most people. IDK if that's accurate but there does seem to be something to it.

The countries where everybody is multi-lingual this almost assuredly happens in middle to early childhood.

[Aaronmacaron]

It is true that the plasticity of children's brains is higher than that of adults. Research also suggests that in very early childhood, children have an exceptionally good ability to discern different sounds and the ability to learn how to make those sounds, although this ability is lost at some point.

However, I believe many people overestimate the advantage children have in learning a language. For example, a four-year-old can have a basic conversation and communicate their needs, but they are not yet able to have a complex conversation. Their vocabulary and pronunciation may not be fully developed yet.

It's important to note that this child has spent a significant portion of their life learning the language and is exposed to it daily, and likely has parents or others to practice their language skills with. Despite this, their language level is not yet perfect.

The point I am trying to make is that it takes a significant amount of time and effort to learn a language, and there is no shortcut or "hack." Most adults would likely do comparably well if they dedicated the same time and effort to learning a language as children do.

[asimpletune]

I think one of the problems is that many people know about this child super power and then give up. OTH, I live in Italy which is full of adult African immigrants, and they all speak Italian.

The fact is any adult can learn any language, they just either don’t have to or don’t want to. I’m not saying it’s easy or it’s the best decision for every situation, but it’s definitely possible. This is true even more so if it’s a popular language with a lot of resources to learn it, and you live in the country where practice is virtually free.

[notch656c]

Is there any survival bias here?

I don't want to be too presumptuous here but my understanding is there are a lot of desperate broke African immigrants finding their way into Italy.

In such a situation you would be forced to rapidly acquire the language to survive, move on somewhere else, or possibly resort to crime because you are unable to communicate to secure a job (which <should> rapidly leads to expulsion from the country). Bad learners get tossed into the last 2 bins, and thus unseen.

Comparatively if white American hacker guy shows up flush with tech cash there's really not much chance I'm going to find myself on police radar or starve not learning the language, even if I'm there for an extended period and even if there illegally.

[blodkorv]

Yes, most people just assumes that learning a language is equaly easy for everyone.

[djtango]

Tbf to my original parent comment, a close friend fits the description of someone who wields English extremely well and is hopeless at foreign languages so I'm not completely unempathetic to people who struggle