I recently started learning Japanese... nearly a month later and I'm starting to see just how helpful this is.
英国的茴香 was the title of a blog on Hive and while it's written in Chinese I was able to suss out that the first two characters meant British. 英 is the kanji for Eng(lish) in 英語. 国 is the kanji for country. Altogether they mean British Fennel. It's nice knowing that around 1.2 Billion people use these characters and it's not just a mental work out to enjoy anime on a different level. For any of you trying to learn I highly recommend learning to type ひらがな, かたかな & 漢字。At least for me it helps enforce how it sounds in my head. Recognizing the characters for their meaning is one thing, and connecting them to how it sounds in Japanese is another. Also 'comprehensible input' is a must for a feeling of progression. I have vague familiarity with 1000 words and I'm hoping to be able to carry a decent conversion in text or speech in 5 more months.
Algunos de ustedes pueden saber que hablo español. E eu posso entender portugues tambem. Yo siento que puedo viajar en todos partes de las americas y vivir sin problemas ahora. Si alguien quiere, te explicaré las cosas de criptomonedas y realidad virtual en su lengua materna, es un buen ejercicio para mí. Pero dame tiempo porque es dificil para explicar en inglés tambien.
I also learned to read 한글, the Korean script which is by far the easiest writing system for a widely spoken language. It came in pretty handy when I was traveling around South Korea... and nowhere else. That is until I pick up a Korean drama or stan K-Pop.
Of course the language I feel most fluent in is javascript. At least when it comes to logic. Javascript isn't a language I'd use to express love... but if you've ever tried you'll realize they all fall short there. Aside from Javascript I have written functional programs with PHP, Swift, Objective-C, C++, C, Assembly, Python, Go, AppleScript, ActionScript, Bash, and several oddities like the graphical language to program lego robots. That also doesn't get into the CSS/HTML side of things, or SQL.
At the end of the day, the mark we leave on the world is only defined by our interactions with it. How many ways are you capable of being understood in those interactions?
I'd love to follow and interact with people using these languages on Hive, or anybody who likes to travel.
I learned to speak Chinese, not to read or write.
Nevertheless, after studying for 3 months and having a trip to China, I found myself able to recognize around 50 ideograms (not characters) and felt quite proud of it.
Contrary to popular belief, learning Chinese is very easy.
I don't know about Japanese or Korean. Japanese writing still looks like a mystery to me but I really love how it is spoken.
I started with learning Korean, but couldn't dedicate enough time so I gave up after a few days.
The hardest part of learning to speak these languages is hearing sounds we aren't familiar with. Japanese has very few sounds that English speakers don't have, while on the flip side you can say ramen/lamen or right/light and most Japanese or Korean speakers couldn't tell the difference. I think Chinese grammar is among the simplest but that writing system sure does look imposing. Since Japanese is written without spaces the Kanji really helps with breaking a sentence into it's pieces.
As far as time to study: I feel watching a season of something on Netflix is pretty common now a days, especially in Covid times. I feel so much better about studying for an hour than watching a show... and then when I watch a show in a foreign language, it's almost like studying.