Asklemmy

43858 readers

1615 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Other than English and Spanish, what would be a very useful language to learn? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 days ago by JoMiran@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

67 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If I could only learn one additional language, and I wanted to travel the world, what language would serve me best other than English or Spanish?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

my neuro-divergence sometimes causes people to think that i'm an asshole and if i can't speak the local language to explain that; i won't be able to explain away the autism induced faux pas that i created and that can sometimes lead to sticky situations.

[–] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ah. Maybe work up a few phrases explaining your situation ahead of the trip?

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

BRILLIANT!

The situations are always the same so this should work fine. Thank you

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Learning the local word for sorry is really handy! I feel you, my partner and I struggle with the same sometimes. Most people everywhere are patient and polite, and want you to love their country!

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

in latin america they were nice to the white passing americans like me that i was traveling with at the time and not so much to me because my words said that i was was sorry, but things like my facial expression; or body language; or intonation said otherwise and i can't imagine how similar situations would work out if i didn't even have the words.

also that and other related experiences over the decades teaches me that the benefit of the doubt comes rare once i've committed that faux pas and the local version of "sorry" by itself doesn't work well if they're angry about the perceived transgression.