This is a genuine question. I’ve always had an interest in learning languages and I have a list I want to learn. I am already somewhat decent in Spanish, so I’m picking up that, practicing my Portuguese, going to learn French and Italian, maybe German, learning Polish, and possibly Russian.
I already canceled the idea of living in Russia due to obvious reasons, but will I have any need to learn the language? Will it be useful? Will that be offensive? Many people HATE Russia and the language.
Learning Russian could be useful in certain geographical areas near Russia, in the military, or translator position. It’s also possible that when hostilities end (or escalate) more position openings could occur. But to learn for personal life the use will be limited.
I don’t personally see how learning a language could be offensive, it’s knowledge not a lifestyle or way of supporting current hostilities. The hate people have is mainly towards the Russian government and policies, anyone who extends that to a language likely also have a lot of other issues they lump together and are being small minded.
The only person who can determine the need to learn the language is yourself. I doubt the world will be overrun by Russian speaking soldiers any time soon, Mandarin is more likely in that kind of a situation.
The only use I could see for learning the language is if you use a lot of Russian torrent sites, and are too lazy to switch the language back to English when installing games from them.
I think you’re Russian to conclusions.
Your puns are Putin this community to shame
You guys need to Finnish with these puns.
No way! I’m Hungary for more puns!
You need to Polish your joke a little
Next guy to add a pun joke to this chain…Europe!
Norway we’re gonna stop!
Learning the language is not a political statement, and you’ll outlive Putin. Besides we’re not solving anything by refusing to communicate with each other. If you want to learn Russian, learn Russian. Just be careful not to fall for the propaganda.
I’ll chime in to add that Russian grammar is fairly complex! As long as you’re willing to spend the time on it, I don’t personally see any downsides. As others have pointed out, Russian can help with other Slavic languages, and can also be useful for other countries in that area.
how to ask for mercy in Russian
Sorry, am of lazy. Prefer shootings Ruski over learning his gibberish.
Ime people hate russia, not it’s people or the language
I play online games for almost 30 years on european servers, and the amount of russians i met that i would call not assholes are staggeringly low. So i would say they have a people problem. And all the events now going on seem to support that theory.
I wouldn’t call people playing competetive online games a good representational cross section tbh
A lot of people do hate Russians, especially if you ask their neighbors.
It is never a bad idea to know the language of your enemy.
Which reminds me: I heard of a story about a Chinese American helping South Korea’s side during the Korean war and like yelling “别开枪，自己人” (“don’t shoot, friendly”) in Mandarin and confusing the PLA, it was such an intriguing story.
Of course, if you look up that story in Baidu search, dude’s branded as a race traitor.
I agree with the person who said it’s not a bad idea to learn the language of your enemy. And Russian culture is fascinating and worthy of study, even if the country is currently being run by a fascist dictator bent on world domination, at the expense and destruction of his own people. But then, that has been a trend in Russian history.
If this bothers you enough to ask about it, have you considered learning Ukrainian instead? You’ll get many of the benefits of learning Russian, and my understanding is that the two languages are mutually intelligible with some difficulty despite the differences.
It’s never a bad idea to learn another language.
It’s never a bad idea to learn. period…full stop.
The act of learning anything wires our brains in a thousand different ways; increases our critical thinking skills. Increases our verbosity and our ability to communicate our own ideas more effectively. It increases problem solving skills, etc…
The very act of learning is something that should be practiced every day with something, whether that’s a new language, or a hobby, or being a history buff…it doesn’t matter. What matters is the learning itself.
So if Russian is what is giving you that interest right now, do it. At the very least, chicks dig polyglots.
Of course not. If we blamed the language for the bad actions of the people who spoke it during, there would be virtually no language left in a pristine enough condition to learn.
That being said, tempers can boil over. So maybe don’t shout your Duolingo answers at a full Starbucks. I mean, that’s good advice regardless of the language but you know what I mean.
There’s never really any downsides to learning another language, provided you have the commitment and resources.
Removed by mod
Russian culture spans way beyond whatever Putin’s currently doing, and has given the world an immense cultural, scientific, historic heritage.
Trying to cancel and destroy Russian culture is akin to destroying German culture and heritage just because one German dude with a weird moustache decided to start Holocaust.
Would be a tragedy to lose either.
German culture and heritage was destroyed by the world wars. What remains is not what was there pre-WWII.
And I’m not cancelling or destroying anything. I’m just prioritizing cultures worth preserving over those that have been poisoned by a century of dictatorship, misinformation, and hate.
Name me one major culture that was not poisoned by dictatorship, misinformation, and hate.
They all are. Our duty is to take the best of each.
I don’t have to, I just have to name one better than Russian. Learn Ukrainian, Polish, German, French Finnish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Romanian, etc then consider Russian.
About half of these countries were militaristic authoritarianist shitholes, some even not that long ago by historical measures. All of them had some shameful moments in history.
Yet, all these cultures have proliferated, and you consider them worthy of studying. Same idea here. Give it time.
It’s not the same idea, as I didn’t advocated s studying them when they were authoritarian shitholes who were actively slaughtering their neighbours.
You were telling about cultures worth preserving - and by your definition, most of the cultures you list were not worth preserving and should have become extinct. Good thing that they were preserved even through the worst of times.
As a German, “German culture” is really not worth preserving.
Learn Mandarin, Spanish, and maybe Hindi, if you’re planning for the future.
Yup!
