[Spareribs]

So lately by default, I have been using my ears to improve my listening  and hearing skills. 
 
From a bunch of apps, I've been teaching myself French, Korean and Japanese language. I even taught myself how to read Korean, Japanese Hiragana and Katakana and the phonetics of written French. 
 
In order to speak a sentence in these languages accurately, you really need a sharp ear and careful listening skills. Listening to the smallest details of the sounds of the alphabets of foreign languages so crucial. You need golden ears.
 
I think another challenge is learning how to speak Chinese. But in order to speak Chinese properly, you MUST listen carefully on how to do it. If you're really good with your ears, you can do a variation of the dialects. The same with various ways of speaking French too. Your brain has to precisely switch modes and you must have the sharpest ear to  learn these.
 
So yeah, learning to speak another language properly can really improve your ears. You may not be too successful and be clumsy like me but at least your ear will be sharper  and more sensitive than the average person.

 

[TwinQY]

These are all languages I can somewhat muddle through (less so on the Korean, and I've forgotten almost all of my French) in terms of listening and speech, but I think it would be interesting to learn an entirely new language, writing and all. In terms of programming languages, the paradigm shift from something in the ALGOL family to something Lisp-y, as an example, can be rather refreshing. I'd like to experience something like that, but outside of programming.
 
With the Chinese dialects, I find that the difference in vocabulary is what trips me up. I can really only understand two - Fuzhou and Min Nan - and just barely. I tried learning Shanghainese once, and was not very successful.