<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">On Aug 26, 2020, at 3:08 PM, Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span>Someone mentioned language learning, triggering this thought that was recently on my mind:</span><br><span></span><br><span>Suppose technology exists to make you quickly fluent in a language of your choice. (For even more counterfactual fun, the menu may include long-dead languages, provided that they were spoken by more than a Dunbar number.) You do not know how many languages your brain, even if enhanced, can hold; the limit varies from person to person. So you choose them one by one until you hit the limit.</span><br><span></span><br><span>What are your first dozen choices? You may specify indirectly, like "the language understood by the greatest number of people in the New World in 1491".</span><br></div></blockquote><br></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Spanish</span><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Mandarin</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Japanese</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Korean</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Russian</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">French </div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Hindi/Urdu</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Farsi</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Classical Latin</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Attic Greek</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Sanskrit</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Classical Arabic</div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br><div dir="ltr"><div style="line-height: normal;"><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"> Sample my Kindle books at:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">http://author.to/DanUst</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>