> Knowing a new language is a lot more than the ability to use google translate.

Machine translation has poor reputation for the mistakes it makes; but if it ever gets good, then I wonder why learning foreign languages will be a more popular activity than learning Latin or Classical Greek is today. Of course reading Homer or Virgil in the original must be much more satisfying than reading them in translation; but the number of people who truly care about that is vanishingly small.

Learning new languages has a lot of benefits, talk to ChatGPT about it. One example connected to recent events is it helps people become more cognitively flexible and less tribal. If your favorite burger joint starts serving contaminated food, it’s nice to be able to seamlessly switch to Indian or Chinese.