What are the best languages to learn if you want to consume a lot of media? I am already learning Japanese.

just "a lot" or do you have any taste in media?
Hindi probably has the /most/ video media (aside from english which i assume you know.)
mandarin probably a close third. maybe russian?
but like... what kind of media you like would probably have more to say about which is best than that. french for noir lovers. russian for depressing and boring novels. latin for old af law and religious texts. etc.

This is an interesting question. Which language has the most media? And does a content saturated world benefit some languages more than others? Anyway.. Mandarin, Japanese, and French are all consumer languages. But.. no matter where you are, from Transnistria to Tokyo, you will see stores, products, etc use English names. Even if they are local, they use English. So English is the ultimate consumer language. There’s nothing else like it. So there are no alternatives.

Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese, and Russian are pretty high up there. I don't know about French internet but those other ones have active and engaging internet spaces and a lot of videos on YouTube. It's kind of crazy how much information you get access once you learn even one other language. We sort-of have this hegemonic perspective as English speakers, that we're the kings of all information or something. But you then you start to see some of the information online, in the mainstream, in other langauges and begin to realize how retarded anglo culture is.

Spanish probably. No matter what you look up, there's always some Spanish equivalent of what you want to look up. Especially with Youtube you'll find anything in Spanish and you don't even have to dig deep. Take what I said with a grain of salt, since I don't speak Spanish, albeit my search results are always flooded with Spanish shit for no reason.

English is stupid and it makes people more stupid. Everyone should learn a classical language and learn how to read a book.

>>6
Agreed, Latin is a quite a good choice. I recommend watching "Latinitas Animi Causa: Latin for Fun!" for spoken Latin videos. The best way to learn a language is to simulate the environment of a child.

For further clarification, I am referring to the streams only. A child does not first learn how the grammar works, he listens until he or she understand the spoken words!

>>6
Latin is actually really easy and you get to read all the classics. The only people who think it's difficult are the people who haven't had a single Latin lesson, as usual with language learning. Latin is mostly memorizing grammar concepts and vocabulary, besides that there's not much to learn.

>>9

Latin is mostly memorizing grammar concepts and vocabulary

Just learn the language, besides that there's not much to learn. Also your description could be applied to every other language that uses some kind of alphabet and not logographs like Chinese. If you're so fond of the classics (in the original language) why don't you give us some reasons for why instead of making smug posts that contain nothing.

>>10
I apologize for the misunderstanding. What I meant is that Latin is mostly memorizing things (i.e. vocab, grammar) that you just have to repeat so often until you memorized it unlike languages where you have to understand many different concepts and ideas in the language. Latin is in that regard easy, because you don't have to understand any fancy concepts, it's just reading through the declining/conjugation tables until you got it.

Also I'm in no way "so fond of the classics", all I meant is that those are something different than what other languages have to offer (which is mostly modern content). Yes, you can learn Sanskrit or Ancient Greek as well, but I still think that is something that distinguishes Latin from other languages in this thread.

>>10

why don't you give us some reasons

NTA but what I like about classical languages is they anchor you in a tradition. I know that's become a dirty word these days but it trains you to think a different way and appreciate a world that isn't like your own. We really don't have authoritative canons anymore.

|they anchor you in a tradition

ya... that's the problem. it doesn't train you to think differently, it trains you to think in a more pure form of the western mode. break through the conditioning! watching anime like bakemono and taking it's spiritualistic ideas seriously will do a better job at seeing and appreciating the world in a different way. :[

but there's no better way to be taken unreasonably seriously by academia than writing some philosophy crap in latin and submitting it to a paper for publishing.

>>13
There are more traditions than the Western tradition. I'd also say there's a difference between the Western Christian tradition and the Enlightenment. The problem is that Westerners don't see their traditions as one among many, but some kind of one size fits all shirt and they can't mentally comprehend people thinking differently.

it trains you to think in a more pure form of the western mode. break through the conditioning!

I don't think people actually want to do this, despite how decolonial has become the buzzword for a decade now. I don't think anyone publishes anything in Latin. The majority of academics are half baked losers anyway. Learning a classical language and learning it well will make you more articulate and skilled.

watching anime like bakemono and taking it's spiritualistic ideas seriously will do a better job

I know this is a shitpost but its unironically true in some ways.

>>6
Most English speakers are bilingual (because most English speakers are not native speakers) and the cognitive benefits of bilinguality are the same regardless of which languages you speak. I don't see how there's anything inherent in English as a language that makes people stupider.

I assume that the sentiment that English is stupid usually comes from (monolingual) native speakers. I have similar feelings toward my mother tongue, which is considered to be smart, I guess, because it's niche and difficult.

>>1
If you're only going for quantity and you're not thinking about what you're consooming but just consooming for no apparent reason it could be argued that if you want to maximize the amount of media or time spent consuming then only consuming in translation is the way to go since you can endlessly compare translations and try to piece together what the original might be like without ever arriving at the full picture. Like some people who don't know Hebrew or Greek spend their miserable lives comparing 20 different English translations of the Bible (instead of doing what it says which can be gathered even from a translation, but I digress). Never consume in the original language.

>>12
I would agree; I was annoyed at the perceived smugness not the recommendation of classical languages. I know some elementary Latin and have read the classics in translation. Some might say that's not enough but do you need a whole another ship if you just want to anchor? There's a reason why the old farmhand still quotes from memory the few Latin phrases he learnt as a child.

>>15
I don't think its necessary to read classics in the original. You are missing out on a lot of nuances, but translations can have a value all of their own. American religious fundies are insanely articulate because they study the KJV. This isn't true of every language. I've noticed a lot of English translations of Arabic or Persian classics are sloppy, inconsistent, and not enjoyable to read. The other advantage of classical languages was the way they bridged different cultures without crushing them, whereas English and French smother and strangle. If you want to passively consume stuff, English is the best language for that.

Most English speakers are bilingual (because most English speakers are not native speakers) and the cognitive benefits of bilinguality are the same regardless of which languages you speak. I don't see how there's anything inherent in English as a language that makes people stupider.

I don't have any data on this but I would argue Zoomers and Generation Alpha probably speak better English than their native language and even if they speak their native languages well, it's a completely americanized version of their mother tongue. I would argue not being able to speak your native language properly and only communicating via Discord/Youtube/Reddit-influenced American bastard language is a form of stupidity.

>>17
I've seen this first hand. My native language is really poor compared to my English but that's because I was educated in the West so there's that too. What worries me is a whole generation of people who interact online and speak better English than their mother tongue, think with English ideas, completely loose or look down on their indigenous culture etc. And a lot of these people are fluent in online slop variants of the language. It really pains me that I don't speak my native language anymore and its so niche I can't just find someone to teach me it.

>>17
Communicating via Discord/Youtube/Reddit is a form of stupidity, nothing inherent in English makes people careless in their thoughts and the atrophying of their native tongue is not a feature of a foreign language. Perhaps I'm nitpicking here or maybe I'm wrong and this is a trend explicable through sociolinguistics. But I get what you're saying.

I'll have to admit I am one those Zoomers who only speak English and I consider myself to be more fluent in it than my native language. I even switch .gov websites from my native language into English when I'm doing taxes or whatever. Yeah, make of that what you will. On anonymous boards like this I'll try to write like an American to blend in and make it harder for people to correlate my identity between posts, but on my own website I write in British English. Opposing American imperialism by pledging allegiance to another Anglo-Empire... As a schizoid hikkineet I am already an eternal outsider without any particular ethnic or national affiliation so "my" culture means nothing to me. It's all up for grabs.

I am already an eternal outsider without any particular ethnic or national affiliation so "my" culture means nothing to me. I

I tend to agree, but my point is about aesthetics. I just find American "culture" disgusting from an aesthetic standpoint, as such I don't want more and more things I like get americanized. Maybe aesthetics are something bad, for whatever reason, but I can't deny that I like pretty things more than ugly things, even though I'd also like to just not care at all about this issue.

Probably Spanish will have a lot more media to consume, seeing as a lot of people speak it worldwide, maybe Chinese also has a lot

>>21
You're missing the big boy, literally, Russian. If you cannot find a movie or a TV show, you are nearly guaranteed to do so if you search for it in Russian. Take a look at rutor, rutracker. Recommended access gate is Tor.

The language of LOVE is universal and can be used to consume anyone.