Epa, I'm Basque. I live in Spain. I've always been quite poor and unable to pay private education. I'm learning Chinese, I learnt English on my own reading manuals and aplication notes, using IRC, mail lists, newsgroups and watching series/movies mainly. Even though my English might be broken I use it everyday and had no problems with it.
I'm able to understand French without any problems (written and spoken and translate it to English as fast as I can move my vocal cords, in real time). I learned French only watching TV (Club Dorothee) without aid when I was a kid and my family and friends don't speak it.
Now I have to learn Chinese to work with embeded stuff because the comments on the leaked codes are in Chinese and the nearly non existent documentation comes in JPG or images inside PDF files and can not be automaticaly translated by a machine without using an OCR first (and being lucky). Learning Chinese It is not easy but can be done, I'm just older and it is not that easy because I don't have time to absorb their media fast enough but it is not harder than learning another programming paradigm.
I couldn't care less about the language, I don't even care for Basque, it just happens that I was born here but it is useless for tech jobs (unless someone wants to slack off working in education). Apart from tech, Basque will die because it is useless for flirting and basque people fuck less among them than hikikomori nerds (and I'm not refering to Idiocracy like movie problems).
My girlfriend is Italian and we use English between us, mainly because we are both too lazy to learn each other's languages with no other practical purpose for it and because we can undertand latin derived languages without dificulties when we have to meet each other's family (and because it is a good excuse not to talk with each other's parents:P ).
To sum up: "Resistence is futile, your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own"
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I'm able to understand French without any problems (written and spoken and translate it to English as fast as I can move my vocal cords, in real time). I learned French only watching TV (Club Dorothee) without aid when I was a kid and my family and friends don't speak it.
Now I have to learn Chinese to work with embeded stuff because the comments on the leaked codes are in Chinese and the nearly non existent documentation comes in JPG or images inside PDF files and can not be automaticaly translated by a machine without using an OCR first (and being lucky). Learning Chinese It is not easy but can be done, I'm just older and it is not that easy because I don't have time to absorb their media fast enough but it is not harder than learning another programming paradigm.
I couldn't care less about the language, I don't even care for Basque, it just happens that I was born here but it is useless for tech jobs (unless someone wants to slack off working in education). Apart from tech, Basque will die because it is useless for flirting and basque people fuck less among them than hikikomori nerds (and I'm not refering to Idiocracy like movie problems).
My girlfriend is Italian and we use English between us, mainly because we are both too lazy to learn each other's languages with no other practical purpose for it and because we can undertand latin derived languages without dificulties when we have to meet each other's family (and because it is a good excuse not to talk with each other's parents :P ).
To sum up: "Resistence is futile, your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own"