Speaking a foreign language overrated. Understanding is not.

This presumes two things:

1. one is not intending on moving to country of target language or has lots of people in your life speaking the target language
2. understanding and producing languages are two related, but still very different skills

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Personally, I'm much more interested in developing high auditory comprehension and passive vocabulary than I am interested in speaking.

Why radically reform my neural network to come up with plethora of idioms and words in a target language if the only time I'm gonna use it, is with random encounters or a vacation to where the language is spoken every couple of years?

For most of us who do this as a hobby rather than an actual need, high comprehension nets us almost all the perks of learning a language: Youtube, Netflix & co., Music lyrics, casually overhearing a conversation, flex, wider perspective on life...

Rewiring your brain to have objects and situations not (just) serve as cues for words and phrases in the foreign language, is what really takes a toll on your native language and is a skill tiresome to develop.

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My dream is to at sometime in the future effortlessly understand 5 languages when spoken without an extreme accent:

German (N)

English (native-level listening, high level producing, graphic novels like Dune make me suffer),

Spanish (never once talked out loud, low level producing, B2 reading, A2 listening)
French (just because it's language learning on easy mode after dabbling with mandarin and already knowing some spanish + the two other indoeuropean langugages)

Mandarin (A1 - I just can't. I'm trying. Characters are fine by me but how things are said... My brain has litterally not been developed to store these kinds of words comprised of short sounds with tones...)

Russian (is on my todo list)

Do you think that'd be possible? Comprehension only

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