Unrelated to the core teaching of the article, but German is a reasonably easy gateway language to Europe. If you know German and English, it will be easy to pick up Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Also Luxembourgish and Afrikaans. It’s easy because it’s quite regular, as far as European languages go.

Russian is another great gateway language because it unlocks the Cyrillic and Slavic worlds.

Italian then completes the picture, as it has many similarities with Spanish, French, and rare Latin-roots languages like Lithuanian.

I used to travel around Europe with my university friends. One knew Italian, another one Russian, I knew German. It’s quite interesting how you can get around most places in Europe with these languages, and consume a lot of culture.

Of course, everyone speaks English these days. But it’s a richer experience to travel when you understand what the people say and can read the signs, etc.

I recommend trying German and I can’t imagine how most people would still apologize about their Deutsch skills 10 years in — the language is really easy. Of course, the article author mentions perfectionism, which is a separate topic.