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Polyglotism. Being able to speak every language would be practically a superpower.
This is a neat idea until you're in a situation where you remember 38 different words for a thing, just not the one in the language you need
I only speak one language fluently and one language extremely poorly.
The number of times I’ve been able to come up with the word I want in my second language and completely blanked on it in my native language baffles my mind.
This is why Spanglish is a thing.
This is why I learned the shit out of English: If I forget a word, there's like 6 more words that are close enough to the one I forgot.
This is a back up power to me. The best power is the power to control time however you like.
You could learn every language ever created with the ability to control time. As you would also live as long as you wanted.
You also would be able to timelock any object making it unmoving and indestructable.
You can heal anyone from anything by rolling them back to when they werent injured
No end to what you can do with controlling time
Technically, if you stop something in time and space, it would disappear before your very eyes if it was on Earth, as the Earth would keep on going on its orbit around the sun, around the Milky Way Galaxy, etc. and your object would be floating somewhere. Against what reference point would you lock it?
Depends on what you need it to do (or not do)
If I could 'cheat' and say 'I know every language in the world', and that included programming languages and things like scientific notation as a language, I'd take that in a heartbeat. If not, I'd take programming, as at least then I can create things and make money.
If speaking every language included dead and forgotten languages too though, then it would be a very tough choice.
This is probably super pedantic (bloody programmers right?) but I really feel like it would depend on what is meant by “know every programming language”. Like being able to remember every syntax and construct is sort of useful but not all that practical. Understanding how to implement the language in a useful way is the valuable part, not just knowing the keywords.
I guess I would kind of compare it to the difference between being able to read Shakespeare and being able to write Shakespeare,
Correct. Learning a programming language is trivial. Far easier than a foreign language.
If we think of it in terms of learning a language, what matters is the grammar and ability to use it to struct prose to create a coherent story.
There's also a lot of reuse which requires knowing what's available. The closest analogy there is how music sampling is used.
If we're being pedantic, in The Matrix, Neo says 'I know kung fu' to explain that he both knows what all the moves are, and how to use them. As that was the topic of the post, I used the same sentence structure to mean the same thing about all languages, including programming 😉
Since we are being pedantic, I think maybe you mean "apply" not implement?
I'd make tens of dollars as the scholar to decode the Harrapan/Indus Valley script!
Or I make makes millions as a YouTuber decoding the Voynich manuscript...
Our society is broken:(
If it was just one language and writing system as a choice, I might say Japanese.
There are so many different characters in their writing as symbols instead of phonetic sounds, that bookstores in Japan are divided into sections, in which one has books that use... say 500 characters, then another section with books that use 1200 characters, or 5000, or 10,000, or more!
To read Japanese or Chinese with a mastery of over 10,000 symbols might be my choice. The richness and depth of those writings must be something incredible.
My second choice, for shits 'n' giggles, might be something like Sumerian or Akkadian, in the original Cuneiform!
I can't even imagine how powerful I would be if I could be ignored in every language.
The rpg munchkin in me hopes polyglot misleading includes computer languages.
This sounds very useful until you realize you still don't want to talk to people in any language.
Yea, the best option.