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> Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no?

It's plenty for communication, not plenty for a conversation.

(It's also a mirror for colonialism, by the way, where the occupied speak the language of the occupier, but the occupiers can't be arsed to learn the language of the occupied.)

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It's not even necessarily enough for communication. With the Pareto curve on word commonality it's really quick to get high percentages of vocabulary. But it's the words you don't know on a sentence that are usually the important ones.

You are right. 60% is nothing, especially given the political situation

/s

can't even talk about chips and language without being attacked by the crew

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295035

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39294267

• https://german.stackexchange.com/a/53783

It's a linguistic topic. Good luck trying to talk with Germans as an English speaker.

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