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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 Firstly, it's from right after the war started back in 2022, so it's significantly out of date, since then there would have been a growing anger in the meantime at the economic damage, stagnant frontlines, obscene casualties, and reports of all the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)"
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.