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Comment by bromuro | Hacker News Reader

Russian is spoken by 250 million people. I hope they are not all your enemies.

Only perhaps 90-100 million of them are Russian citizens. For many others it's a second language too.

So you gonna assign anyone who happen to have Russian passport as an enemy? Plenty of those are in the west and also have US/Canadian/etc passport

What the fuck is wrong with the world?

There are some good people among Russian citizens, abroad or not. Some great people even. Unfortunately they are few and far between and are not representative of the mindset, aspirations and values of their home nation. So saying "the Russians are the enemy" is entirely fair. It is an actively hostile society much like Nazi Germany was during the WW2 and this nitpicking over good individuals is not making the blanket evaluation unfair in any way.

>"There are some good people among Russian citizens, abroad or not. Some great people even. Unfortunately they are few and far between and are not representative of the mindset, aspirations and values of their home nation."

You lost me here. You sound exactly as the people you are trying to put a blame on.

Well I for one didn't start, participate in or have supported the ongoing war of extermination and conquest. And I am not trying to win any Russian hearts and minds; that's one thing about being enemies.

>"And I am not trying to win any Russian hearts and minds; that's one thing about being enemies."

Never mind Russian hearts. Think view might have a problems well beyond Russia.

Wrong in Russia you mean. If they stop assassinating people, threatening nuclear strikes, conventional attacks, and so on, they wouldn't be anyones enemy.

No wrong with the people of the same mindset as yourself

I think you miss the point. I am talking about the incentive to learn somebody’s native tongue. I doubt people want to know it to meet an emigrant in Germany and have a conversation in russian. Equally I do mot learn spanish to talk to my neighbours but to have a conversation with a local in spain.

But by your own reasoning, you're also saying it's reasonable to learn Russian as a way to better understand Russia because your country happens to be opposed to them.

If you accept that this relatively obscure reason is a valid motivation (which I agree it can be) then you must also accept that there are all sorts of other motivations that are equally valid including "so I can speak to emigrants" or even just "because I find it fun".

It's not an obscure reason, many people engage with the enemy professionally. That's one of the most frequent motives to learn a language probably. Either you want to immigrate to a country or you want to conduct business with it or it's your enemy and you need to undersrand it. First two options are out for the Western world at the moment

>"First two options are out for the Western world at the moment"

The West still trades with Russia. Obviously at reduced rate and sometimes under the table.

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