I don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.

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TFNA an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).

	▲	estebank 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Someone who can speak English on top of their mother tongue is already multilingual. Anecdotally, people who live anywhere close to a border in Europe tends to speak at least two languages, often more than two, regardless of class or profession. In Latin America, most countries speak Spanish (with the obvious exception of Brazil and smaller colonies from the other European countries), so the every day pressure to learn another language isn't there and English becomes the "obvious" choice. I don't quite get why you seem to discount English entirely. There's always been a Lingua Franca. It hasn't always been the same one. There will likely always be one.

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tekno45 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

they think art is a niche hobby and not the basis of human culture. I wouldn't listen too intently to them.

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TFNA an hour ago | parent [-]

Art is perennial and omnipresent in human societies, but the sort of art that operates through a language foreign to the aficionado’s own, and learning that language would be beneficial to appreciation of it, is obviously going to be a niche subset of art.

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tekno45 an hour ago | parent [-]

basic puns and rhyming are niche forms of art?

	▲	Jtarii 3 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Puns and rhyming can generally be translated across languages. I don't think its controversial to say that its possible to get most of what a piece of art is trying to say through a translation.
	▲	estebank 36 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If anything comedy is an excellent way of learning a language: the use of double and triple entendres helps to quickly get exposed to alternate meanings and misunderstandings of words. Comedy aimed at learners or multilinguals can also help, plenty of anglos who learned Spanish can relate to "feeling pregnant" early on :)