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@Lorelai why Ukrainian? I know there's a war but it's a fairly small fairly economically weak country with relatively low media output
@TheAllMemeingEye and it's still preventing a full scale military invasion from the biggest country in the world.
Why would you want to learn the language of a nation of genocide imperialists?
@Lorelai firstly, know thy enemy, secondly, calling an entire nation genocidal imperialists is a tad ironic, I hope you primarily just meant the government and its supporters
@TheAllMemeingEye I don't see any people protesting at the moment. At the very least the rest of the country is passively accepting it, and therefore, tacitly supports it. According to various news articles the majority of the country supports the invasion.
So until they do something besides whining that the world hates them, yes all Russians.
@Lorelai the trouble is that totalitarian states like this have a tendency to imprison, torture, and kill anyone who speaks out too much. It's not a very conducive environment for protest movements.
As for approval ratings, while I'm sure a significant fraction do genuinely have zealous ideological support for the regime, it seems plausible that a large portion consist of people who are mostly apolitical and uninformed thus heavily swayable by the ubiquitous state propaganda, and plausibly there might be many who are answering out of fear that their answer is subject to state surveillance.
After actually checking the article, it seems there is even more reason to be skeptical. Firstly, it's from right after the war started back in 2022, so it's significantly out of date, since then there would have been a growing anger in the meantime at the economic damage, stagnant frontlines, obscene casualties, and reports of all the blatant war crimes their side is committing. Secondly, the article itself states that the Russian government has a tendency to suppress media that doesn't back their narrative. Thirdly, even if you ignore literally all of my prior points, the maximum approval rating mentioned is 83%, so 17%, that's 25 million people, or about 70 times the population of New Orleans, disapprove despite all the stuff stacked against them.
I really hope you don't mean it literally when you say all Russians are genocidal imperialists. That would vastly reduce my previously held respect for you.
@TheAllMemeingEye I'm saying that if they're not actively fighting it, they are complicit. The reason that Ukrainians don't respect them is because they are doing what Russians won't - actively challenging the murderous corruption of the Russian regime since 2014. In short, Russians are cowards in comparison to Ukrainians.
Totalitarian states do imprison, torture, kill but that is because they are so weak. The media overstates the role of figures like Navalny who challenged the system, when the sad reality is that a lot of Russians either actively support the war or just don't care. This is more up-to-date:
"war support fluctuated between 70–75 percent (with about 20 percent of respondents consistently opposing the war)"
@HectorHernandez I'm curious why you feel that way about Ukrainian but not Russian? Is it because in your mind Russia has great imperial power status?
@Lorelai no, I just feel when people think complicated languages, they do not think Ukrainian, they think Russian. So, no I'm am not basing this off of imperial status
@HectorHernandez but that does mean you're basing this off its perceived higher status, which as an unconscious belief, I would want to challenge if I were you. I would say they're about the same in terms of complexity.
@Lorelai are you personally leading an armed insurgency against your own government for the terrible atrocities it is committing? It doesn't even matter which country you're in, as far as I know literally every government on earth is committing a constant hyperholocaust against farm animals, plausibly on such an obscenely large scale that it outweighs all atrocities against humans. No? That's what I thought. And that doesn't make you evil, as long as you're not actively contributing to it for trivial personal gains (most people are). Passive complicity to evil isn't ideal, but in a world where many are actively carrying out evil, complicity is forgivable in my opinion.
@HectorHernandez for context, here is a map of actual language difficulty for English speakers
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1f97r63/language_difficulty_rankings_for_native_english/
As you can see, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Arabic are the hardest, with Russian and Ukrainian both in the middle ground.
@TheAllMemeingEye why is your kneejerk reaction to coddle the "poor Russians" instead of empathising with Ukrainians who have had their homes destroyed, or been tortured by Russians, electrocuted, sexually assaulted by Russians? When Russians have kidnapped their kids. Not Putin personally, Russians had to do this. And don't assume how active I may or may not be, it won't make me insecure, just horrified that you assume inactivity is everyone's baseline.
@Lorelai why is your kneejerk reaction to coddle the "poor Ukrainians" instead of empathising with chickens who have been thrown into shredders (if male) by Ukrainians, had their beaks ripped out with pliers without anaesthetic by Ukrainians, kept in cages so overcrowded they can't fully move and become covered in diseased abscesses from all the caked on poop by Ukrainians, allowed to almost die of thirst during final transportation by Ukrainians, electrocuted to unconsciousness (if lucky) by Ukrainians, then had their throats cut to bleed out by Ukrainians? Not Zelenskyy personally, Ukrainians had to do this.
Unless... maybe an entire country's population CAN'T be condemned for the evil actions of a subset? Maybe that would even be considered blatant discrimination and a thinly veiled excuse for potential future counter-atrocities?
@TheAllMemeingEye I'm more worried about the existing, real crimes against humanity that Russians have been carrying out, instead of the potential future scenarios you're imagining, or what sounds like a description of the US fast food industry with a different nationality switched in so you can somehow try and justify defending genocide perpetrators.
A couple questions:
Which languages do you currently know?
Which country did you grow up in, and if different which do you currently live in, and if different which would you ideally want to live in?
Do you have a strong idea of what you want to gain from learning a language?
What do you personally feel are the pros and cons of each one for you?
@TheAllMemeingEye I was born in America, and I only know English. I do not really want to live in a specific place, So I just posted this question to see what other people thought.
@HectorHernandez Italian is going to be easiest to learn, but I think Russian would be more useful. Zulu is probably not worth your time. If you live in America, though, I would recommend learning Spanish over any of those languages. It definitely would give the biggest practical benefit.