IDK about everyone else, but in my experience if you live in a place that only speaks one language, learning languages is mostly a decadence for rich people who can afford to travel to places to practice speaking. I've put a ton of energy over the years to learn languages but without ever getting to speak any of them with any regularity it all just becomes tears in the rain and those hours could have been put into learning something else.
As someone who also lives in a monolingual culture, I'm not sure I totally agree. I would wager that any small or medium-sized city is going to have an enclave of immigrants who have a different native language. In you can definitely find Spanish- and Chinese-speaking people working pretty much anywhere. If you ask nicely and make a real effort I think they most likely won't mind interacting with you in their native language, if you can more or less get through it.
I have a guy who works at a convenience store near me who I speak to in his native language, and the other day he was in the back and I was talking with his coworker in English, and when the guy I know came out from the back he yelled at him in their native language, "Why are you speaking English to them? They speak ___!" which made me feel pretty cool and accepted.
Now, if you're trying to learn Swedish or something, yeah that would be pretty much impossible.
Just my experience, not trying to invalidate yours but rather give encouragement!
IDK about everyone else, but in my experience if you live in a place that only speaks one language, learning languages is mostly a decadence for rich people who can afford to travel to places to practice speaking. I've put a ton of energy over the years to learn languages but without ever getting to speak any of them with any regularity it all just becomes tears in the rain and those hours could have been put into learning something else.
As someone who also lives in a monolingual culture, I'm not sure I totally agree. I would wager that any small or medium-sized city is going to have an enclave of immigrants who have a different native language. In
you can definitely find Spanish- and Chinese-speaking people working pretty much anywhere. If you ask nicely and make a real effort I think they most likely won't mind interacting with you in their native language, if you can more or less get through it.
I have a guy who works at a convenience store near me who I speak to in his native language, and the other day he was in the back and I was talking with his coworker in English, and when the guy I know came out from the back he yelled at him in their native language, "Why are you speaking English to them? They speak ___!" which made me feel pretty cool and accepted.
Now, if you're trying to learn Swedish or something, yeah that would be pretty much impossible.
Just my experience, not trying to invalidate yours but rather give encouragement!
That's sad, but I get you. There are apps and communities out there that can expose you to native speakers though. Not the same, but it does help
What languages? There are a lot of companies struggling to find multi lingual people that speak languages they want.