>>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.
>>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.
>>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.
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.