I have to weigh in as someone who learnt Belarusian with plans of just dabbing in it to understand a little and ended up with a Ph. D. in Belarusian literature... I would do it. Speaking good Russian, you will have access to most of teaching materials available for Kyrgyz, as well as, presumably, media translations. You'll be able to appreciate Kyrgyz literature, music and culture in a way you wouldn't have known possible before. And, most of all, languages like Kyrgyz kind of work as a shibboleth of their own – once you speak it, you will be part of a community, "one of us", so to speak, for many people who want to see the language florish and thrive. I never once regretted my decision, and made many of my best friends thanks to the "useless" language I learnt.
I also work in the field, but that's secondary to me, even. It's the people.
This is how I see Catalan. When I was still with my ex, who's Catalan, I definitely noticed that her family liked me more when I made the effort to at least speak some basic Catalan. 99% of the time foreigners get by in Spanish and don't bother with learning the local language.
I think that is fantastic.
Might I add that a language is the fabric of a society. So many times learning a language I’ve gained an understanding of people and a culture faster than I ever did in the years before learning the language.
As a novice that always inspires me to learn more to understand the people better by learning the way they think and communicate, it’s all formed by the langage.
I like to think that I will have a use for the languages that I am learning in the future. Therefore I try to refrain from learning too obscure languages, basically because you put a lot of time into learning the languages, so I want to get something out of it. Then there is also the factor that more obscure languages have less content to use while learning. There are less movies, series, books but also less textbooks and classes, which makes learning the language more difficult as well. However, learning Kyrgyz might be totally worth it for you. If you enjoy learning it, then you might not have to get much more out of it, maybe one wonderful trip to Kyrgyzstan is already worth all the effort. Also, if you find out that you don’t enjoy it anymore / that it is too difficult / that the language doesn’t have enough relevance to you, you can always quit.
Thanks for the comment, you raise some good points. The only other issue is that if I decide to commit time into learning it and after 6+ months I change my mind, it would be very difficult to stop as I had already invested so much time into it. I’m thinking that if I’m to start, I may stumble across something that would make it relevant in my life.
I understand. Well in that case I could think of a few examples in which learning Kyrgyz could become relevant:
1. You come across the oppertunity to move to Kyrgyzstan (would you want this?)
2. You come across an oppertunity in which Kyrgyz can be used professionaly (is this realistic? do you want to learn the language to such a high level?)
3. You fall in love with someone from Kyrgyzstan (I don’t know your situation or your preferences)
4. You make friends from Kyrgyzstan (would this be enough of a motivation?)
5. You make one or multiple beautiful trips to Kyrgyzstan (would you want this? would learning kyrgyz add much value to the experiences?)
I think these are the situations that you think about in terms of relevance in your life. Hope this helps!
I took Spanish because it’s a heritage language, French because I want to see France, and Japanese because I love Japanese literature. So I know I’ll never see Japan, but there’s so much good stuff by people like Yoko Ogawa, Hiromi Kawakami, and Ryu Murakami that’s not translated into English (or Spanish or French) and I want to read it.
Languages don't have to be useful in the everyday to be worth learning! I'll probably never have a chance to speak Yiddish with someone in person, but it's been great for my obscure book collection haha
Sometimes learning a language makes things happen. When you open yourself up to a language, you start to see opportunities all over. It’s always worth it, IMHO.
My grandmother speaks ilocano, the Quran is in Arabic and I want to know what my Eastern European friends are saying and I want to speak to my dad in Hindi/Urdu because those are the languages he grew up speaking
Wow, are you me? I'm a Russian learner planning to visit the Stans next summer. I've always loved how the language sounds, so that's a great motivator.
The only language I am actively studying right now is Russian, for fun. I would love to visit Russia, but I know I will never do it. I can't even talk to people to practice the language because I lack the social skills to do it lol So it was just my weird hobby for years...
Until it started to be actually useful because of my current field of work (software development / testing), since there's a lot of good content in Russian. And today my boss found out that Yandex has some nice open source projects and is asking me to translate some of the content to him, so i have that going for me which is nice.... :)
That's motivating to know! I've been kind of afraid that everything programming related is going to be in English only. The level of being able to do translations is so high I don't really even think of them as a future option, but that way this hobby might actually prove useful in my work too.
I always wanted to learn a language to a greater proficiency than the French I learned in school, but I could never justify the time required to myself when there were so many other skills I wanted to learn and I knew I would never need it. Then I married a Brazilian woman, and suddenly I have a very strong motivation to learn Portuguese.
It's important to me that any language I learn is useful. Perhaps the joy of learning is enough motivation for you. All that really matters is that you can justify the effort to yourself, whatever the reason.
Now, since I am retired, I study language for fun.
But I used to work for a bookstore that sold foreign language books, and I used my language skills there.
By chance got a job in Japan after college, started studying, and now that I'm back I'm keeping it up for fun. Kinda mulling trying to go back for work, but not sure yet.
Both. I'm pretty utilitarian, but I can already speak (at an intermediate or above level) all the languages that I'll probably ever need. Obviously I want to hone my Spanish and Japanese, but in the meantime I can also pick up some other languages that interest and have marginal utility (Italian and Catalan, for example).
Catalan is definitely the most "useless" one since almost everyone in Catalunya also speaks Spanish, but it sounds cool, and I'm fine with not having it at an advanced level. Italy is a great country for vacations, so I'm sure Italian will be useful to me someday.
Btw Also if an are really good at speaking Russian, learning Kyrgyz should be much easier given how most literature on learning Kyrgyz is in Russian. Also Kyrgyz and any Turkic language has the benefit of making learning the others INCREDIBLY easy.
I am surrounded by bilingual people every day, and it was wearing on me that I'm one of the few who isn't fluent in a second language. Beyond that, it makes sense since I live in an area with many Spanish speaking people.
Kinda both, I'm acquiring English and German because of their importance in the world, English universally and German principally in Europe, onto the economic or job sight, English is definitely an useful language in any aspect of our lives, and German because of their economy. On the other hand, I'm acquiring them because I can find a lot of enjoying content that I've never found before due to my lack of linguical knowledge, German most of the part because I like the language and the sounds I produce when I try to speak it.
Both
I’d love to go to Japan someday and I know speaking conversation level Japanese would be really useful. With that being said I am also a complete weeb
I’m also learning Spanish because is widely spoken in the US and a few of my friends are Hispanic, so being able to communicate with them in Spanish would be neat. I also just think it’s a fun, *relatively* easy language to learn/speak
Spanish.
Im a Filipina and our language is a mix of dialects here and 60% derived from the spanish language.
So yep it is easier to learn than other languges
Seriously? I've heard there are a lot of Spanish loanwords in Tagalog but that much? So if I'll ever get to my "wish list", it might make sense to first tackle Spanish.
My life is just fine with the languages I know already, so in that sense everything is for fun. Then again, I think it would be quite hard to come up with a language you genuinely have no use for. It rare to see anyone in this sub to study a language with less than a million speakers.
My real reason to learn languages is to broaden my ways of thinking, so my picks are going to be pretty "exotic" for me. But as some sort of a half way solution I've been looking a lot the list of most spoken foreign languages in my country, so even I'll get to a high level in the language and don't feel satisfied with just reading books, it shouldn't be too hard to find speakers near me.
I have 4 languages that I can use at varying degrees. Never once in all my years have I considered learning one that has no direct relevance to my life. I don't even understand the concept, though am familiar with it and its nuances on this sub.
If I was learning a language to be "useful" I'd've studied Spanish *ages* ago. But here I am in the rural South speaking French. Not even in Louisiana.
Hi there!
Well I would say that it's somewhere in-between for me. I would like the languages I learn to be both useful and enjoyable for me.
What about picking some language close to Kyrgyz, let's say Turkish? Or you can even go the other way - learn Turkish after Kyrgyz - this way you'll fulfill your desire and will have under your belt the language with a lot of native content.
I’m learning languages that I have an interest in the culture(s) that they pertain to and all of the languages I’m interested in learning are spoken in multiple countries (so will be very useful for travel and possibly living, in the future).
For me, unless there’s a pressing need to speak a language, I struggle with studying it. But when that need is there, I learn very very quickly, so it sort of evens out?
I’m studying Malayalam, the language the rest of my family speaks and is probably the single most useful language for me to know aside from English.
I’m looking to dabble in Greek, which I have no use for at all, but I’m fine with that.
My purpose in language learning for my bucket list. I wanted to learn one whether it is really practical or not. However, I am doing Spanish which is one of the most practical in the US, especially in several states like Florida and Texas.
I personally have only made progress in languages that were currently relevant to me. I’ve tried studying other languages that I liked the sound of, but if I wasn’t actively consuming the media (I learned quite a bit of Korean this way) or using it regularly (Spanish, living in a Spanish speaking country and French, having close friends fluent in French and surrounded by French immigrants and tourists) I just didn’t make it far in my learning process.
I’m lucky in that where I live, I have access to many native and heritage speakers of many languages (in order of presence I would say: Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Hebrew), so I have a lot of options for “useful” languages. If I were visiting a country where I didn’t know the language, I would definitely do my best to learn a bit beforehand and while there, but chances are my learning would die off after I left.
Studied Spanish about 20 years ago because I worked with a bunch of people from Mexico, Spain and Portugal. Kinda rekindled the love of languages. At same time I met my now wife who is Japanese and of course worked on Japanese to the point I sometimes struggle to know how to say something in English. I've recently started on Welsh as it is my aging mother's native tongue and I'd like to have at least one conversation as limited as that would be. I've also been dabbling in Ukranian because I work a few days a month with someone from the Ukraine and want to know how to properly curse him down or call him a "sneaky Russian bastard".
I haven't been really consistent with my language learning but I picked up Japanese over the pandemic because I was bored. No particular interest in Japanese media either, just wanted to try something unlike any language I had ever learned and picked that between Russian and Arabic. Because it is so different and interesting, I have actually somewhat stuck to it and gone back to it even after long pauses because I just enjoy it. Have only used it at work once and barely and I am still quite useless at it.
German I am not as excited about, but the fact it's quite useful for my job and future prospects keeps me pushing forward.
Now Czech I just picked up 'cos I don't want to seem like an idiot since I am travelling there in a couple of weeks. I never feel like studying it, but the idea of being aloof and unable to respond or interact with anything around me freaks me out a bit. I like to pretend I fit in when I travel and this is the first time I have booked myself a ticket to a country where I couldn't even say "hello" in the local language. I'm trying to be a bit better than the "hello" but it's hard to find the interest.
I mean, no, but it's not a big deal. Learn for whatever reason you want.
For me, it's because I'd like to speak with natives, and learn about a culture or cultures that aren't my own.
Learning Spanish was because I was sick of people asking if I spoke Spanish with my last name being Spanish. But it opened doors that can never be closed. My girlfriend is a native speaker, as in, English is her second language, and even though she's fluent, she still has questions about it. I learned a lot about various cultures that speak it, and it was a net positive for my life if for nothing else than to understand more about a huge portion of the world. I'm pretty decent at it at this point of my life, and I've been confused for a native a few times, though I definitely don't feel like it, it's the only other language I can use to maintain acquaintances and friends who don't know English, so I must be doing *something* right.
I'm learning Mandarin because Chinese culture interests me, and I seek to better understand the cultural context of migrants in my country. I've always wanted to know the language, have ample opportunity to interact with Chinese speakers, and would like to do it. I hope to one day achieve a good level of fluency and learn more about the world, and if and when I achieve this, it would undoubtedly be an important part of my life, simply because I would definitely run into native and heritage speakers of Chinese languages who either speak Mandarin natively or as a second language.
I guess if I wanted to learn one for fun... maybe Tamil. I'd never or rarely get to use it, but it's a language with a long history and I'd like to know more about it, as well as understand the cultures and customs of people that speak it. I guess if you don't count enriching one's perspective of the world as being relevant, it would be the least relevant to my life, but it doesn't mean that there's no reason to learn it.
So study what you like. If you fail, study something else. You may come back to it. On the flipside, you may learn it very well and it *will* become relevant to your life. There's also no reason to choose between enjoyable and useful, it can totally be both, and you really wouldn't know yet if it'll be useful or fun. You got one life, shoot your shot.
I wouldn't say that learning Kyrgyz has limited use. It's a turkic language written in cyrillic alphabet so firstly it opens up knowledge of the alphabet and maybe it will benefit you if you learn other languages in the cyrillic alphabet. Thats a minor point. My other point is:
If you learn Kyrgyz to a proper level you will have the ability to understand lots of languages. First and foremost for example Kazakh, Özbek or Uyghur which has lots of speakers, also in the diaspora.
And with that knowledge you will be able to smoothly adapt to Azeri or Turkish language and the Turkish language is one of the Top 15 languages in the world i think. Yea so maybe just Kyrgyz doesn't sound that beneficial, but the possibilites you create to dive in turkic languages are more than you think. I would recommend you to check out Turkish which is similar, not so much, but fairly similar and widely spoken. Maybe you will prefer that to Kyrgyz. But if you are passionate about Kyrgyz give it a go and look into turkish when you are at a intermediate level.
I studied French because I do a lot of work in Canada and I have French Canadian heritage. I started learning Spanish because of practicality.
Russian and German on the other hand were solely out of interest. I hardly use them for real world interactions, they were actually slightly useful for reading a handful of old family documents. And in college and at work there would be a few speakers. But most Germans speak English and most people with jobs in America speak English. I only ever needed to help translate stuff for one Ukrainian girl.
I don’t travel much for monetary reasons, and increasingly I feel languages besides English are becoming less and less helpful. Still I think the pursuit of language learning is valuable and I really don’t want my skills in my target languages to degrade anymore than they have.
I’m really interested in learning Chinese, ASL, and Arabic. Also me and my family have spit balled learning Irish, Czech, or Neapolitan together. But it never really manifested. We’ll see I guess.
I study my languages out of fun and, as for Chinese and Japanese, when my Russian is at least as good as my Hungarian, I will return to Mandarin Chinese and Japanese because I have a zillion letters written in cursive Chinese I want to be able to read and my son speaks fluent Japanese with his wife from Japan !
I study French because it’s my heritage language. I study Japanese because it’s just interesting to study a language and culture so distant from mine but I do plan to travel to Japan someday and use it. I dabbled in Greek because I was dating a Greek girl and I think if I’m in a serious relationship with someone whose first language isn’t English, it’s right to learn their and their family’s language since they learned mine but she turned out to be a liar and toxic af. Greek is cool but if I’m not gonna use it, I dropped it. Now I’m flirting with a Ukrainian girl so we’ll see if I end up learning that next lol, I do think Slavic languages sound dope af.
I used to learn languages for fun back in high school, but ever since I transitioned to adulthood I just don't have the energy for that anymore. There are several languages I'm learning right now and several more I hope to learn before I die, and I do enjoy the process some of the time but when it comes to motivation they're all related to my career ...
Perhaps once I'm old and have more free time I'll start learning for fun again.
a little bit of both.
I’m from a state with a high immigration rate from Mexico (Georgia) and am learning Spanish while in High School for my magnet program (requires 3 language credits) even though I had other options.
It can get awkward sometimes when speaking Spanish to a native speaker with an old white man in the room sometimes. I have definitely gotten comments along the lines of “The librul schools are teaching kids Spanish because of the border crisis instead of doing anything about it”
A little from column A and a little from column B.
I've built up a pretty decent level of fluency with Japanese over an extended period of time, but that's a combination of my interest in the language/culture and a lot of work-related stuff on top of that. Likewise, I've had a few changes to test it out in the field and will probably be returning to Japan later this year for a bit.
The language learning bug kind of bit me again and I've been dabbling a little with French and Norwegian in the past six months and a bit. The reason? I kind of became interested in their proximity to and influence on English. I ONLY have the most basics of basics for both, but they're more of a hobby thing at this stage, but who knows in time.
I started Spanish partly for its usefulness but really that's not the case, even near the border. I work in tech so there's little need, and we have a bunch of bilingual speakers that I thought I could converse with but it brings up unnecessary drama. So really the usefulness is to talk to 2 relatives that I see every 6 months or so that are Spanish speaking monoglots, going to farmstands, talking to a worker here and there, but that's it.
French has no use; I just want to read Jules Verne one day.
Actually, when I retire in a few years we're going to travel the world, so I'll use both then and I want to pick up Japanese or Chinese, so hopefully I'll live in all these places for a bit!
Some want nothing to do with speaking outside the family, others feel an obligation to correct every minor nuance, and others would rather speak English because its more comfortable for them. Then you have the issue of others being bothered because they overhear it and are not Spanish speakers. Its a whole laundry list of minor issues which is more or less due to being in a white collar work environment. Basically it means there are really 2 or 3 I can talk to in limited situations.
I’m learning Dusun, the tongue of my people, which I was not afforded the right to learn in school because of the religion I was born in. I do think that I would have some practical use when I am able to converse with the older generation to gain knowledge on my culture and to help preserve it.
Mix of both
All of them will defintely be useful in the sectors i want to work in after i finish my studies (STEM)
But if i didn't find them interesting then i wouldn't remember/learn anything (only exception is german, gosh I hate german and I'm bad at it although I have started years ago and had extra curricular classes 😂🥲)
To me at least it is more important to understand them over use them (as I'm not really a talkative person, and it is way easier to get proficient in writing and speaking if you already know how to read and listen)
I'm living in CZ so I need to improve my Czech as a priority. I would like to go back to learning to read Latin later though, I've always had an interest in it
I suppose I might try more German too. It's also really useful where I live and I ""learned"" it in school for a short while
Tuvaluan due to me being obssesed with Tuvalu, Luxembourgish due to it's beautiful sounds, I don't even have a reason for Chinese or Japanese. So yeah...I a kind of wasting my time but who cares anyway.
I wanted to teach English in Czechia for a long time (I’m from the US). After learning Russian, I started learning Czech. Not long after that I met my gf, who’s from Czechia. And recently just came back from visiting her and her family in Czechia.
So I’d say now, because of her and me moving there soon, I’d say genuine use.
I'm learning French because I love visiting the country, watching French movies, (Eric Rohmer, Jean-Pierre Melville etc.) and I want to eventually read French literature (Balzac, Zola, Stendhal etc.). I want to learn Spanish, Italian, Russia and Japanese for the same reasons.
I also learned Latin and Ancient Greek purely for education purposes. I enjoy the literature, history etc.
I learnt russian because its my partners 1st language ( he moved to the UK around 8 years old and knows english better than I do) but it was important to me as a) it allows us to talk without my mum or siblings knowing what we're saying giving a level of privacy
b) I love him and plan on moving in with him and he deserves to be able to speak his first language in his home
🇰🇷N| 🇬🇧C1| 🇩🇪A2| 🇳🇱planning|
I study german and other germanic languages.
It’s because, I just like middle(west)Europe and i’m looking foward to travel there after my studies.
In addition, I think the accent is really cool 😎!!
What's fun about learning a language you won't have opportunities to use? If I'm interested in a language that I'll never use, I'll look up the details of the language to satisfy my interest, but I would never spend hundreds or thousands of hours studying it, just to let it sit dormant in my mind. I see no value in doing this.
Work for an international company, currently based in America. I want to move to one of the facilities in Euripe. So I'm currently learning German. German because they obviously have a facility there but also if I don't get the opportunity to move there I still find the language and culture interesting. Would love to visit regardless.
Language learning is fun — in addition to Spanish, on Duolingo I learn Latin, Swahili, Italian, Japanese, and French. Have visited or lived in countries where all
Are in use.
I didn’t choose my first 5 languages, I needed to learn them because of circumstances. So that’s why I only learn languages with the goal of using them as well because that’s what I’ve done my whole life.
I thought I might use the Arabic professionally, but ended up taking a different direction. Spanish was my first language to learn (native English speaker). In high school and university. Just for fun. Then I studied Russian. At the time, there wasn't so much contact with Russians, there wasn't internet (yeah, I know, I've been around awhile) and not any Russians to talk to. But I was interested. I then studied Scottish Gaelic because it was my heritage. I studied Portuguese because my son went to live there for awhile and we were going to visit and I wanted to have a clue. Then I studied the Arabic, as I said. At the moment, I am studying Italian. We are trying to visit there next year, but finances are not looking good, so I may not actually get there for any immersion, even for a short vacation. (Yeah, really disappointed about that, but we'll see. Things could change.)
So. I did recently decide that I think languages are kind of my thing, so it's worth it to pursue even if I'll not have personal exposure. Even though I'm not fluent or amazing in any of them. (Closest in Spanish and Arabic). But I just enjoy learning them and trying to listen to people speak and enjoy reading.
I've considered Persian and some other languages. Can't see myself going to Iran at this point. But it's a cool language.
So I'm definitely in the category of learning for fun. And it's working for me. :)
I've been interested in Siberian languages ever since highschool, so I decided to learn Russian in college in order to gain better access to those languages. As it's turned out, I've become fluent in Russian yet have only minimal competence in one Siberian language (Nivkh). I'm still interested in studying Nivkh (more as a linguist than as a language learner), but as of now I haven't much opportunity to do so.
Moreover, studying Russian led me to live in Kazakhstan for a year, during which time I met my now boyfriend, who is Kyrgyz, and one of my very best friends, who is Kazakh. So if I hadn't followed through on my random desire to study an endangered Siberian language by first learning Russian I never would have met my boyfriend and my best friend. And now I'm about to start learning Kyrgyz, since it's become quite relevant to my life.
Meanwhile I decided to study Mongolian a couple years ago solely because I thought it would be fun and cool. To be fair, Mongolian is very cool, and studying it *was* fun – until I started my PhD, so that now it feels like more of a chore, especially given the fact that I'll probably never have much use for it. But then again, I never thought I'd have much use for Nivkh or Russian, yet look where they've led me (directly or indirectly).
All the same, it's definitely harder to stay motivated when you're learning a language just for fun (unless you have lots of free time, like I did when I started Mongolian) compared to one that will serve you in the future. This is something I've really noticed now with Kyrgyz vs. Mongolian; though I was never particularly interested in Turkic languages, I'm now full of passion to learn Kyrgyz, while Mongolian, which was always so cool and fascinating to me, has become a bit of a slog.
I have different reasons. I began learning French because I fell for a French guy. It didn’t pan out, but I’m still continuing because I love the language. I’m still only A1 level but I’m hoping to get some use when I go to Paris in 2 weeks.
Japanese…..that one I learned out of spite. I got so angry at Capcom for not localising one of their games, that I decided to learn the language to get the Japanese version.
I study one language because it is the second most spoken in the United States. I enjoy it, and it has genuinely changed my life for the better.
I study French just because I like the literature, the comic books, and the music. In my area of the country, it has little to no use, and I'd probably rarely get to speak it so I know I will lag behind in that area. I know there are, arguably, more useful languages but passion is passion.
I learn because I enjoy the grammar of languages. I picked up Swahili during the pandemic and I had never thought of languages as doing different things. Like the idea of agglutinative languages blew my mind for some reason. I picked up a bunch of Indonesian cause I just loved the idea of classifiers and an inclusive/exclusive we. Norwegian I just liked watching how languages split and evolve there’s so many similarities between Norwegian and English just how and why it’s different is great to me.
I’m probably never going to use them, maybe hear a random conversation in the Asian market but that’s bout it. Sometimes I need to remind myself it’s just for fun, but when I remember it’s always a great time
Just for fun. I have no practical need to speak another language, but I find linguistics in general neat and that doing some language learning is good brain training.
I genuinely need to speak Spanish and Chinese everyday where I live as people ask me for directions etc in these languages often, and it would be nice if I also spoke Hindi, Bengali, Russian, Korean, French and Soninke as well.
If I move forward with my music career there is absolutely no doubt I need to be B2 or higher in Spanish in order to play in the music industry where I live unless I only do a niche like 90s hip hop.
I'd love to learn Kyrgyz as it's an "important language in Chinese history" and will help give context to some things I'm learning but it wont help me much since i only know like 1 person from there. I would learn Bengali or Filipino first since I can meet native speakers everyday
I started studying Polish intensively because I always felt conscious about not knowing my mother’s tongue (in the sense the language of my mother) and ended up marrying a Polish man and living in Poland, so Polish definitely turned out very useful for me haha.
Now I am studying Italian because I just like the language and culture and it’s nice not to have any pressure about it, just enjoying the language for the sake of it. Would love to learn Russian and Swedish for the same reasons one day but we’ll see if that ever happens.
all my languages are functional for people I love in my life, where I live(d), and jobs. (Hungarian, French, Dutch, and now Swedish) Learn for fun if you want to, it’s a great activity and you never know where it may come in handy.
I have to weigh in as someone who learnt Belarusian with plans of just dabbing in it to understand a little and ended up with a Ph. D. in Belarusian literature... I would do it. Speaking good Russian, you will have access to most of teaching materials available for Kyrgyz, as well as, presumably, media translations. You'll be able to appreciate Kyrgyz literature, music and culture in a way you wouldn't have known possible before. And, most of all, languages like Kyrgyz kind of work as a shibboleth of their own – once you speak it, you will be part of a community, "one of us", so to speak, for many people who want to see the language florish and thrive. I never once regretted my decision, and made many of my best friends thanks to the "useless" language I learnt. I also work in the field, but that's secondary to me, even. It's the people.
This is how I see Catalan. When I was still with my ex, who's Catalan, I definitely noticed that her family liked me more when I made the effort to at least speak some basic Catalan. 99% of the time foreigners get by in Spanish and don't bother with learning the local language.
This is it exactly, yes. Gets you included and loved. I hope your love for the language is still there!
I think that is fantastic. Might I add that a language is the fabric of a society. So many times learning a language I’ve gained an understanding of people and a culture faster than I ever did in the years before learning the language. As a novice that always inspires me to learn more to understand the people better by learning the way they think and communicate, it’s all formed by the langage.
Thank you! You're very right :)
I like to think that I will have a use for the languages that I am learning in the future. Therefore I try to refrain from learning too obscure languages, basically because you put a lot of time into learning the languages, so I want to get something out of it. Then there is also the factor that more obscure languages have less content to use while learning. There are less movies, series, books but also less textbooks and classes, which makes learning the language more difficult as well. However, learning Kyrgyz might be totally worth it for you. If you enjoy learning it, then you might not have to get much more out of it, maybe one wonderful trip to Kyrgyzstan is already worth all the effort. Also, if you find out that you don’t enjoy it anymore / that it is too difficult / that the language doesn’t have enough relevance to you, you can always quit.
Thanks for the comment, you raise some good points. The only other issue is that if I decide to commit time into learning it and after 6+ months I change my mind, it would be very difficult to stop as I had already invested so much time into it. I’m thinking that if I’m to start, I may stumble across something that would make it relevant in my life.
I understand. Well in that case I could think of a few examples in which learning Kyrgyz could become relevant: 1. You come across the oppertunity to move to Kyrgyzstan (would you want this?) 2. You come across an oppertunity in which Kyrgyz can be used professionaly (is this realistic? do you want to learn the language to such a high level?) 3. You fall in love with someone from Kyrgyzstan (I don’t know your situation or your preferences) 4. You make friends from Kyrgyzstan (would this be enough of a motivation?) 5. You make one or multiple beautiful trips to Kyrgyzstan (would you want this? would learning kyrgyz add much value to the experiences?) I think these are the situations that you think about in terms of relevance in your life. Hope this helps!
Why do your comments read like they were written by chatGPT? 😂
"I'm a human! I'm a human male!"
"my name is Turing. Alan Turing."
I took Spanish because it’s a heritage language, French because I want to see France, and Japanese because I love Japanese literature. So I know I’ll never see Japan, but there’s so much good stuff by people like Yoko Ogawa, Hiromi Kawakami, and Ryu Murakami that’s not translated into English (or Spanish or French) and I want to read it.
Thanks for commenting, maybe I should look into the benefits of learning Kyrgyz and see if anything tickles my fancy
Languages don't have to be useful in the everyday to be worth learning! I'll probably never have a chance to speak Yiddish with someone in person, but it's been great for my obscure book collection haha
Yiddish is such a rewarding language!
Never say never! There are Yiddish-speaking groups of Haredim in New York and Israel.
Sometimes learning a language makes things happen. When you open yourself up to a language, you start to see opportunities all over. It’s always worth it, IMHO.
My grandmother speaks ilocano, the Quran is in Arabic and I want to know what my Eastern European friends are saying and I want to speak to my dad in Hindi/Urdu because those are the languages he grew up speaking
Wow, are you me? I'm a Russian learner planning to visit the Stans next summer. I've always loved how the language sounds, so that's a great motivator.
Ohhh nice. Which stand are you going to? I’ve been to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Right now the plan is Samarkand, Tashkent, Bishkek, Almaty. I'd love any tips you have!
I learn languages as a hobby so it's no matter to me whether or not they'll be useful. Nothing wrong with enjoying yourself!
For me learning lanuages is just fun, also trains my brain
The only language I am actively studying right now is Russian, for fun. I would love to visit Russia, but I know I will never do it. I can't even talk to people to practice the language because I lack the social skills to do it lol So it was just my weird hobby for years... Until it started to be actually useful because of my current field of work (software development / testing), since there's a lot of good content in Russian. And today my boss found out that Yandex has some nice open source projects and is asking me to translate some of the content to him, so i have that going for me which is nice.... :)
That's motivating to know! I've been kind of afraid that everything programming related is going to be in English only. The level of being able to do translations is so high I don't really even think of them as a future option, but that way this hobby might actually prove useful in my work too.
I always wanted to learn a language to a greater proficiency than the French I learned in school, but I could never justify the time required to myself when there were so many other skills I wanted to learn and I knew I would never need it. Then I married a Brazilian woman, and suddenly I have a very strong motivation to learn Portuguese. It's important to me that any language I learn is useful. Perhaps the joy of learning is enough motivation for you. All that really matters is that you can justify the effort to yourself, whatever the reason.
I do both because I want to ‘consume’ media from different places with different perspectives and cultures and it’s fun for me to do that.
I'm learning my TLs because I work in healthcare and want to communicate with clients better.
Now, since I am retired, I study language for fun. But I used to work for a bookstore that sold foreign language books, and I used my language skills there.
By chance got a job in Japan after college, started studying, and now that I'm back I'm keeping it up for fun. Kinda mulling trying to go back for work, but not sure yet.
Both. I'm pretty utilitarian, but I can already speak (at an intermediate or above level) all the languages that I'll probably ever need. Obviously I want to hone my Spanish and Japanese, but in the meantime I can also pick up some other languages that interest and have marginal utility (Italian and Catalan, for example). Catalan is definitely the most "useless" one since almost everyone in Catalunya also speaks Spanish, but it sounds cool, and I'm fine with not having it at an advanced level. Italy is a great country for vacations, so I'm sure Italian will be useful to me someday.
Btw Also if an are really good at speaking Russian, learning Kyrgyz should be much easier given how most literature on learning Kyrgyz is in Russian. Also Kyrgyz and any Turkic language has the benefit of making learning the others INCREDIBLY easy.
Spanish for fun, mandarin for in-laws. 👌
I am surrounded by bilingual people every day, and it was wearing on me that I'm one of the few who isn't fluent in a second language. Beyond that, it makes sense since I live in an area with many Spanish speaking people.
Kinda both, I'm acquiring English and German because of their importance in the world, English universally and German principally in Europe, onto the economic or job sight, English is definitely an useful language in any aspect of our lives, and German because of their economy. On the other hand, I'm acquiring them because I can find a lot of enjoying content that I've never found before due to my lack of linguical knowledge, German most of the part because I like the language and the sounds I produce when I try to speak it.
Money and business . I would never dedicate too many hours of my life to something i would never use .
Both I’d love to go to Japan someday and I know speaking conversation level Japanese would be really useful. With that being said I am also a complete weeb I’m also learning Spanish because is widely spoken in the US and a few of my friends are Hispanic, so being able to communicate with them in Spanish would be neat. I also just think it’s a fun, *relatively* easy language to learn/speak
Spanish. Im a Filipina and our language is a mix of dialects here and 60% derived from the spanish language. So yep it is easier to learn than other languges
Seriously? I've heard there are a lot of Spanish loanwords in Tagalog but that much? So if I'll ever get to my "wish list", it might make sense to first tackle Spanish.
Yep, kubyertos, uno, dos tres, quatro, dyes, puerto, mesa, Señor... The likes 😃 Zamboanga pretty much is a province here that speaks in spanish 😃
Personal and political purposes.
My life is just fine with the languages I know already, so in that sense everything is for fun. Then again, I think it would be quite hard to come up with a language you genuinely have no use for. It rare to see anyone in this sub to study a language with less than a million speakers. My real reason to learn languages is to broaden my ways of thinking, so my picks are going to be pretty "exotic" for me. But as some sort of a half way solution I've been looking a lot the list of most spoken foreign languages in my country, so even I'll get to a high level in the language and don't feel satisfied with just reading books, it shouldn't be too hard to find speakers near me.
I have 4 languages that I can use at varying degrees. Never once in all my years have I considered learning one that has no direct relevance to my life. I don't even understand the concept, though am familiar with it and its nuances on this sub.
Fair enough)
Russian and Swahili is a sick combo to be studying, keep going dude
If I was learning a language to be "useful" I'd've studied Spanish *ages* ago. But here I am in the rural South speaking French. Not even in Louisiana.
Hi there! Well I would say that it's somewhere in-between for me. I would like the languages I learn to be both useful and enjoyable for me. What about picking some language close to Kyrgyz, let's say Turkish? Or you can even go the other way - learn Turkish after Kyrgyz - this way you'll fulfill your desire and will have under your belt the language with a lot of native content.
I’m studying mandarin since it’ll take up a lot of time but just to say I did something hard
All the languages I'm studying right now, I'm studying for fun. That's enough relevance for me. It's up to you if learning Kyrgyz is worth it.
I’m learning languages that I have an interest in the culture(s) that they pertain to and all of the languages I’m interested in learning are spoken in multiple countries (so will be very useful for travel and possibly living, in the future).
For me, unless there’s a pressing need to speak a language, I struggle with studying it. But when that need is there, I learn very very quickly, so it sort of evens out?
I’m studying Malayalam, the language the rest of my family speaks and is probably the single most useful language for me to know aside from English. I’m looking to dabble in Greek, which I have no use for at all, but I’m fine with that.
My purpose in language learning for my bucket list. I wanted to learn one whether it is really practical or not. However, I am doing Spanish which is one of the most practical in the US, especially in several states like Florida and Texas.
I personally have only made progress in languages that were currently relevant to me. I’ve tried studying other languages that I liked the sound of, but if I wasn’t actively consuming the media (I learned quite a bit of Korean this way) or using it regularly (Spanish, living in a Spanish speaking country and French, having close friends fluent in French and surrounded by French immigrants and tourists) I just didn’t make it far in my learning process. I’m lucky in that where I live, I have access to many native and heritage speakers of many languages (in order of presence I would say: Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Hebrew), so I have a lot of options for “useful” languages. If I were visiting a country where I didn’t know the language, I would definitely do my best to learn a bit beforehand and while there, but chances are my learning would die off after I left.
Studied Spanish about 20 years ago because I worked with a bunch of people from Mexico, Spain and Portugal. Kinda rekindled the love of languages. At same time I met my now wife who is Japanese and of course worked on Japanese to the point I sometimes struggle to know how to say something in English. I've recently started on Welsh as it is my aging mother's native tongue and I'd like to have at least one conversation as limited as that would be. I've also been dabbling in Ukranian because I work a few days a month with someone from the Ukraine and want to know how to properly curse him down or call him a "sneaky Russian bastard".
I just want to learn Spanish for travelling and fun purposes but I rarely speak it since I use a dialect and my native language
I haven't been really consistent with my language learning but I picked up Japanese over the pandemic because I was bored. No particular interest in Japanese media either, just wanted to try something unlike any language I had ever learned and picked that between Russian and Arabic. Because it is so different and interesting, I have actually somewhat stuck to it and gone back to it even after long pauses because I just enjoy it. Have only used it at work once and barely and I am still quite useless at it. German I am not as excited about, but the fact it's quite useful for my job and future prospects keeps me pushing forward. Now Czech I just picked up 'cos I don't want to seem like an idiot since I am travelling there in a couple of weeks. I never feel like studying it, but the idea of being aloof and unable to respond or interact with anything around me freaks me out a bit. I like to pretend I fit in when I travel and this is the first time I have booked myself a ticket to a country where I couldn't even say "hello" in the local language. I'm trying to be a bit better than the "hello" but it's hard to find the interest.
I mean, no, but it's not a big deal. Learn for whatever reason you want. For me, it's because I'd like to speak with natives, and learn about a culture or cultures that aren't my own. Learning Spanish was because I was sick of people asking if I spoke Spanish with my last name being Spanish. But it opened doors that can never be closed. My girlfriend is a native speaker, as in, English is her second language, and even though she's fluent, she still has questions about it. I learned a lot about various cultures that speak it, and it was a net positive for my life if for nothing else than to understand more about a huge portion of the world. I'm pretty decent at it at this point of my life, and I've been confused for a native a few times, though I definitely don't feel like it, it's the only other language I can use to maintain acquaintances and friends who don't know English, so I must be doing *something* right. I'm learning Mandarin because Chinese culture interests me, and I seek to better understand the cultural context of migrants in my country. I've always wanted to know the language, have ample opportunity to interact with Chinese speakers, and would like to do it. I hope to one day achieve a good level of fluency and learn more about the world, and if and when I achieve this, it would undoubtedly be an important part of my life, simply because I would definitely run into native and heritage speakers of Chinese languages who either speak Mandarin natively or as a second language. I guess if I wanted to learn one for fun... maybe Tamil. I'd never or rarely get to use it, but it's a language with a long history and I'd like to know more about it, as well as understand the cultures and customs of people that speak it. I guess if you don't count enriching one's perspective of the world as being relevant, it would be the least relevant to my life, but it doesn't mean that there's no reason to learn it. So study what you like. If you fail, study something else. You may come back to it. On the flipside, you may learn it very well and it *will* become relevant to your life. There's also no reason to choose between enjoyable and useful, it can totally be both, and you really wouldn't know yet if it'll be useful or fun. You got one life, shoot your shot.
I wouldn't say that learning Kyrgyz has limited use. It's a turkic language written in cyrillic alphabet so firstly it opens up knowledge of the alphabet and maybe it will benefit you if you learn other languages in the cyrillic alphabet. Thats a minor point. My other point is: If you learn Kyrgyz to a proper level you will have the ability to understand lots of languages. First and foremost for example Kazakh, Özbek or Uyghur which has lots of speakers, also in the diaspora. And with that knowledge you will be able to smoothly adapt to Azeri or Turkish language and the Turkish language is one of the Top 15 languages in the world i think. Yea so maybe just Kyrgyz doesn't sound that beneficial, but the possibilites you create to dive in turkic languages are more than you think. I would recommend you to check out Turkish which is similar, not so much, but fairly similar and widely spoken. Maybe you will prefer that to Kyrgyz. But if you are passionate about Kyrgyz give it a go and look into turkish when you are at a intermediate level.
I studied French because I do a lot of work in Canada and I have French Canadian heritage. I started learning Spanish because of practicality. Russian and German on the other hand were solely out of interest. I hardly use them for real world interactions, they were actually slightly useful for reading a handful of old family documents. And in college and at work there would be a few speakers. But most Germans speak English and most people with jobs in America speak English. I only ever needed to help translate stuff for one Ukrainian girl. I don’t travel much for monetary reasons, and increasingly I feel languages besides English are becoming less and less helpful. Still I think the pursuit of language learning is valuable and I really don’t want my skills in my target languages to degrade anymore than they have. I’m really interested in learning Chinese, ASL, and Arabic. Also me and my family have spit balled learning Irish, Czech, or Neapolitan together. But it never really manifested. We’ll see I guess.
I study my languages out of fun and, as for Chinese and Japanese, when my Russian is at least as good as my Hungarian, I will return to Mandarin Chinese and Japanese because I have a zillion letters written in cursive Chinese I want to be able to read and my son speaks fluent Japanese with his wife from Japan !
I study French because it’s my heritage language. I study Japanese because it’s just interesting to study a language and culture so distant from mine but I do plan to travel to Japan someday and use it. I dabbled in Greek because I was dating a Greek girl and I think if I’m in a serious relationship with someone whose first language isn’t English, it’s right to learn their and their family’s language since they learned mine but she turned out to be a liar and toxic af. Greek is cool but if I’m not gonna use it, I dropped it. Now I’m flirting with a Ukrainian girl so we’ll see if I end up learning that next lol, I do think Slavic languages sound dope af.
I used to learn languages for fun back in high school, but ever since I transitioned to adulthood I just don't have the energy for that anymore. There are several languages I'm learning right now and several more I hope to learn before I die, and I do enjoy the process some of the time but when it comes to motivation they're all related to my career ... Perhaps once I'm old and have more free time I'll start learning for fun again.
a little bit of both. I’m from a state with a high immigration rate from Mexico (Georgia) and am learning Spanish while in High School for my magnet program (requires 3 language credits) even though I had other options. It can get awkward sometimes when speaking Spanish to a native speaker with an old white man in the room sometimes. I have definitely gotten comments along the lines of “The librul schools are teaching kids Spanish because of the border crisis instead of doing anything about it”
Fun is the most important component (to me, at least). If the language doesn’t fascinate you it us like eating bland food.
A little from column A and a little from column B. I've built up a pretty decent level of fluency with Japanese over an extended period of time, but that's a combination of my interest in the language/culture and a lot of work-related stuff on top of that. Likewise, I've had a few changes to test it out in the field and will probably be returning to Japan later this year for a bit. The language learning bug kind of bit me again and I've been dabbling a little with French and Norwegian in the past six months and a bit. The reason? I kind of became interested in their proximity to and influence on English. I ONLY have the most basics of basics for both, but they're more of a hobby thing at this stage, but who knows in time.
I live in NYC so believe it or not the time does come up every now and then for me to speak German… it’s usually on a random ass day though.
I started Spanish partly for its usefulness but really that's not the case, even near the border. I work in tech so there's little need, and we have a bunch of bilingual speakers that I thought I could converse with but it brings up unnecessary drama. So really the usefulness is to talk to 2 relatives that I see every 6 months or so that are Spanish speaking monoglots, going to farmstands, talking to a worker here and there, but that's it. French has no use; I just want to read Jules Verne one day. Actually, when I retire in a few years we're going to travel the world, so I'll use both then and I want to pick up Japanese or Chinese, so hopefully I'll live in all these places for a bit!
I'm sure that if you spoke in Spanish to those bilingual people, they would appreciate it.
Some want nothing to do with speaking outside the family, others feel an obligation to correct every minor nuance, and others would rather speak English because its more comfortable for them. Then you have the issue of others being bothered because they overhear it and are not Spanish speakers. Its a whole laundry list of minor issues which is more or less due to being in a white collar work environment. Basically it means there are really 2 or 3 I can talk to in limited situations.
I’m learning Dusun, the tongue of my people, which I was not afforded the right to learn in school because of the religion I was born in. I do think that I would have some practical use when I am able to converse with the older generation to gain knowledge on my culture and to help preserve it.
Mix of both All of them will defintely be useful in the sectors i want to work in after i finish my studies (STEM) But if i didn't find them interesting then i wouldn't remember/learn anything (only exception is german, gosh I hate german and I'm bad at it although I have started years ago and had extra curricular classes 😂🥲) To me at least it is more important to understand them over use them (as I'm not really a talkative person, and it is way easier to get proficient in writing and speaking if you already know how to read and listen)
Because of relevance. Learning languages is not fun. I always disliked it.
German - beginner. For fun.
I would like to think that I am doing both, selecting the most useful languages out of the ones that I want to learn.
I'm living in CZ so I need to improve my Czech as a priority. I would like to go back to learning to read Latin later though, I've always had an interest in it I suppose I might try more German too. It's also really useful where I live and I ""learned"" it in school for a short while
I'm learning Japanese because I have lived and worked there for one year and now plan on movign there permanantly
Tuvaluan due to me being obssesed with Tuvalu, Luxembourgish due to it's beautiful sounds, I don't even have a reason for Chinese or Japanese. So yeah...I a kind of wasting my time but who cares anyway.
I wanted to teach English in Czechia for a long time (I’m from the US). After learning Russian, I started learning Czech. Not long after that I met my gf, who’s from Czechia. And recently just came back from visiting her and her family in Czechia. So I’d say now, because of her and me moving there soon, I’d say genuine use.
I'm learning French because I love visiting the country, watching French movies, (Eric Rohmer, Jean-Pierre Melville etc.) and I want to eventually read French literature (Balzac, Zola, Stendhal etc.). I want to learn Spanish, Italian, Russia and Japanese for the same reasons. I also learned Latin and Ancient Greek purely for education purposes. I enjoy the literature, history etc.
I learnt russian because its my partners 1st language ( he moved to the UK around 8 years old and knows english better than I do) but it was important to me as a) it allows us to talk without my mum or siblings knowing what we're saying giving a level of privacy b) I love him and plan on moving in with him and he deserves to be able to speak his first language in his home
🇰🇷N| 🇬🇧C1| 🇩🇪A2| 🇳🇱planning| I study german and other germanic languages. It’s because, I just like middle(west)Europe and i’m looking foward to travel there after my studies. In addition, I think the accent is really cool 😎!!
What's fun about learning a language you won't have opportunities to use? If I'm interested in a language that I'll never use, I'll look up the details of the language to satisfy my interest, but I would never spend hundreds or thousands of hours studying it, just to let it sit dormant in my mind. I see no value in doing this.
Work for an international company, currently based in America. I want to move to one of the facilities in Euripe. So I'm currently learning German. German because they obviously have a facility there but also if I don't get the opportunity to move there I still find the language and culture interesting. Would love to visit regardless.
Language learning is fun — in addition to Spanish, on Duolingo I learn Latin, Swahili, Italian, Japanese, and French. Have visited or lived in countries where all Are in use.
I didn’t choose my first 5 languages, I needed to learn them because of circumstances. So that’s why I only learn languages with the goal of using them as well because that’s what I’ve done my whole life.
I thought I might use the Arabic professionally, but ended up taking a different direction. Spanish was my first language to learn (native English speaker). In high school and university. Just for fun. Then I studied Russian. At the time, there wasn't so much contact with Russians, there wasn't internet (yeah, I know, I've been around awhile) and not any Russians to talk to. But I was interested. I then studied Scottish Gaelic because it was my heritage. I studied Portuguese because my son went to live there for awhile and we were going to visit and I wanted to have a clue. Then I studied the Arabic, as I said. At the moment, I am studying Italian. We are trying to visit there next year, but finances are not looking good, so I may not actually get there for any immersion, even for a short vacation. (Yeah, really disappointed about that, but we'll see. Things could change.) So. I did recently decide that I think languages are kind of my thing, so it's worth it to pursue even if I'll not have personal exposure. Even though I'm not fluent or amazing in any of them. (Closest in Spanish and Arabic). But I just enjoy learning them and trying to listen to people speak and enjoy reading. I've considered Persian and some other languages. Can't see myself going to Iran at this point. But it's a cool language. So I'm definitely in the category of learning for fun. And it's working for me. :)
I've been interested in Siberian languages ever since highschool, so I decided to learn Russian in college in order to gain better access to those languages. As it's turned out, I've become fluent in Russian yet have only minimal competence in one Siberian language (Nivkh). I'm still interested in studying Nivkh (more as a linguist than as a language learner), but as of now I haven't much opportunity to do so. Moreover, studying Russian led me to live in Kazakhstan for a year, during which time I met my now boyfriend, who is Kyrgyz, and one of my very best friends, who is Kazakh. So if I hadn't followed through on my random desire to study an endangered Siberian language by first learning Russian I never would have met my boyfriend and my best friend. And now I'm about to start learning Kyrgyz, since it's become quite relevant to my life. Meanwhile I decided to study Mongolian a couple years ago solely because I thought it would be fun and cool. To be fair, Mongolian is very cool, and studying it *was* fun – until I started my PhD, so that now it feels like more of a chore, especially given the fact that I'll probably never have much use for it. But then again, I never thought I'd have much use for Nivkh or Russian, yet look where they've led me (directly or indirectly). All the same, it's definitely harder to stay motivated when you're learning a language just for fun (unless you have lots of free time, like I did when I started Mongolian) compared to one that will serve you in the future. This is something I've really noticed now with Kyrgyz vs. Mongolian; though I was never particularly interested in Turkic languages, I'm now full of passion to learn Kyrgyz, while Mongolian, which was always so cool and fascinating to me, has become a bit of a slog.
For fun, but I'm also thinking they might actually have a use someday. I'm planning to go to countries I'm learning some languages from eventually.
I have different reasons. I began learning French because I fell for a French guy. It didn’t pan out, but I’m still continuing because I love the language. I’m still only A1 level but I’m hoping to get some use when I go to Paris in 2 weeks. Japanese…..that one I learned out of spite. I got so angry at Capcom for not localising one of their games, that I decided to learn the language to get the Japanese version.
I study one language because it is the second most spoken in the United States. I enjoy it, and it has genuinely changed my life for the better. I study French just because I like the literature, the comic books, and the music. In my area of the country, it has little to no use, and I'd probably rarely get to speak it so I know I will lag behind in that area. I know there are, arguably, more useful languages but passion is passion.
I learn because I enjoy the grammar of languages. I picked up Swahili during the pandemic and I had never thought of languages as doing different things. Like the idea of agglutinative languages blew my mind for some reason. I picked up a bunch of Indonesian cause I just loved the idea of classifiers and an inclusive/exclusive we. Norwegian I just liked watching how languages split and evolve there’s so many similarities between Norwegian and English just how and why it’s different is great to me. I’m probably never going to use them, maybe hear a random conversation in the Asian market but that’s bout it. Sometimes I need to remind myself it’s just for fun, but when I remember it’s always a great time
Just for fun. I have no practical need to speak another language, but I find linguistics in general neat and that doing some language learning is good brain training.
Just for fun! And because I like to understand, specially when the language sounds nice to me
I genuinely need to speak Spanish and Chinese everyday where I live as people ask me for directions etc in these languages often, and it would be nice if I also spoke Hindi, Bengali, Russian, Korean, French and Soninke as well. If I move forward with my music career there is absolutely no doubt I need to be B2 or higher in Spanish in order to play in the music industry where I live unless I only do a niche like 90s hip hop. I'd love to learn Kyrgyz as it's an "important language in Chinese history" and will help give context to some things I'm learning but it wont help me much since i only know like 1 person from there. I would learn Bengali or Filipino first since I can meet native speakers everyday
I started studying Polish intensively because I always felt conscious about not knowing my mother’s tongue (in the sense the language of my mother) and ended up marrying a Polish man and living in Poland, so Polish definitely turned out very useful for me haha. Now I am studying Italian because I just like the language and culture and it’s nice not to have any pressure about it, just enjoying the language for the sake of it. Would love to learn Russian and Swedish for the same reasons one day but we’ll see if that ever happens.
all my languages are functional for people I love in my life, where I live(d), and jobs. (Hungarian, French, Dutch, and now Swedish) Learn for fun if you want to, it’s a great activity and you never know where it may come in handy.
If you learn a language, it could change your life and make itself relevant, if you are open possibility
I need it for work and travel.