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Comment by realusername | Hacker News Reader

I think they are onto something, language learning is quickly shifting into a hobby category (I don't mean it negatively)

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The problem with not learning languages is that it restricts you to computer-mediated communication. If you learn other languages than your own, even at a fairly basic level, there is a whole world of social interaction and culture out there that just can't be accessed with a machine in the way.

This isn't to say that automated translation is bad, I use it extensively, but not all interaction worth having is online.

The expectation is that AI translation will also become quasi-realtime, so for in-person interactions, too.

Many cultures will probably much rather interact with a foreigner speaking proficient AI translation, than a language-learner speaking with a poor accent and constant grammatical imperfections. Go to the Netherlands now as a Dutch learner who hasn't reached B2 level, for example, and local people won't like it, it just wastes their time compared to using English.

I happily go abroad and speak with my hosts in my rudimentary German, and we are all happy. Sometimes we shift to their slightly-less-rudimentary English, and that's good too. Although we sometimes resort to machine translation to look up a specific word or phrase when we are both stuck, we have never felt the need to use real-time spoken machine translation.

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