I would like to be able to travel to Spanish speaking countries and be able to converse with as many people as I want. I want as few hindrances as possible when it comes to communicating. Spanish is a very popular language. Many people in the communities around me have people that only speak Spanish so interacting with them is very dependent on if you can speak that language. Also, my family speaks Spanish so I have the desire to draw closer to them by speaking to them in their native tongue. I also want to learn Portuguese since it's also very popular.

What about you Ermeny?

I have been in a position where I have learned a few languages for different reasons. I will go in order from most recent:

This is my family heritage, and the culture/traditions and people motivate me to continue. I am very much in love with all things Ukrainian. I continue to learn it to keep connected to my ancestry and to speak with Ukrainian relatives.

I briefly took this because I love Chinese films. I hoped that I could enjoy watching a movie more than just reading the subtitles throughout a film. Unfortunately my night school course was extremely short and didn't provide a lot of information. I retained nothing. For this reason it's not even on my list of languages because I don't remember anything of what little I learned.

I worked on the cruise ships when I was in my twenties. Before starting my first contract, I learned Spanish because I knew it would be useful for my work as many of our ports of call were going to be in warm, Caribbean countries. So I learned this for professional reasons, but did not use it any longer after leaving the industry.

I lived in a community at one time that had many German immigrants, and we had many German tourists each summer. I took a night school course for about a year, and then went to Europe where I made some friends in a few German-speaking countries. German for me was all about friendship and fun times, and to this day is a language I enjoy -- even though I never did achieve fluency.

I learned this language in school between grades 6-10. For these five years, it was not a choice but a requirement as a Canadian student. Because of this, I resented having to learn it. Unbeknownst to me, French is something I'm constantly exposed to, even though I cannot technically speak it. I find myself understanding it often as our labels are in English and French in Canada, so if forced to figure things out, I likely could. But having a conversation? No.

I am motivated to learn a language if I like the culture and if I want to get a job in that particular country

thank you very much Jaaguar for sharing your vision ...

It's different for each language. Sometimes it's for traveling, sometimes it's to gain access to some knowledge, a couple of languages I studied because I was forced to (in school).

 

But one thing that's common to all of them is that every language is a different way of looking at things. With every new language you acquire, a new world opens up for you. You are inside of the minds of another ethnic group, you can be (not entirely but largely) one of them, participate in what they share among each other. You get to hear things they'd never say in a foreign language.

 

When you've had that experience a few times, you keep longing for more, and so you go on studying more languages.