this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad? (kyu.de)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school

This is crazy to me. I studied French at school for years and got to a decent enough level, but then when I tried to take Spanish later on I couldn't deal with it. Maybe if they'd been concurrent it would've been a different story but I just couldn't keep the languages separate in my brain. Then years later when I moved to a different country the French pretty much left my head as a new language replaced it.

I guess I've only got one "foreign language center" in my head and only one language can occupy it at any time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

you need to keep using it. Watch a show or read a book in that language every once in a while. It'll do wonders to keep the brain on it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Keeping them separate is a struggle! Especially if they come from the same ancient language. I have troubles separating like German and English, and also Italian and French. Especially when I try to speak German, I end up throwing in lots of English words and structures