I'm bilingual. Learning new languages is pointless if you have no one to talk to in the new language.
Language skills atrophy surprisingly fast.
Language skills atrophy surprisingly fast.
I have no idea what the truth is here...
[0]: There were 10 distinct languages, making up 98% of all languages in the empire. My understanding is that most citizens had to learn German, even though only 20% of the population spoke German as a mother tongue. Also a few different language branches (Germanic, Ugric, Slavic, Romance), with one of those branches (Ugric) not being Indo-European at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_and_religious_compositi...