Interesting fact: Not everyone in the world speaks English. That may actually be unironic news to some Americans since there is very little practical use for a foreign language in parts of the United States (aka “our little universe,”) and there is vast popular culture and news media (one in the same), enough to satisfy one’s interests. I can certainly say, though, that there is much more to learn, understand and enjoy about other cultures and languages, opening new dimensions to your own perceptions about the world. It is very much worth it to branch out linguistically. (Not to be a jerk, but one could even put some effort into really learning their own native language. I didn’t really learn English until I started trying to learn another language. The drawback being now I cringe a lot more.) Learning a language is hard work for most of us, so hard that it may not be enough just to study grammar rules, memorize vocabs (vocabulary words) and strain to comprehend idioms. (Fess up English, you’ve got some weird ones too.) Usually it just doesn’t stick; you never stop feeling like an idiot when you try to say anything beyond the skill of a native three year old. Something more has to draw you in and motivate you, like some intriguing cultural history or music.

You could get really drawn into and excited about a foreign language based on the culture, but conversely you could also form an aversion to a language based on your ambivalence or antipathy to some part of a society. In high school, which is commonly the first opportunity a publicly educated student will have to electively/voluntarily learn a foreign language, the selection is typically limited to either Spanish, French or German. Personally, I had grown up with a bit of an aversion to Spanish, I thought French sounded dumb, and I might have passed on all foreign languages, but in my senior year I started to get really interested in German since some relatives/teachers I admired were enthused about it. I don’t remember what I knew about Germany and German before that, but I was immediately hooked, especially when I got to meet a group of high school students from Germany visiting our class. Soon after high school I got to study it even more, to spend an extended residence in Germany, and upon returning to the U.S. I eventually completed a degree in German, all along the way drawing in more reinforcing interests to help me learn.

Since that time I have dabbled in learning other languages, and thanks to my first round with German I have a better sense of actually how to learn languages. Without going into the techniques, of course the point I’m making now is that the real catalyst is having a driving motivation, and usually for me the draw comes from music. Part of what caught my interest for German back in the 80’s was Xmal Deutschland, Propaganda, Trio and Falco. I got really interested in Icelandic when I started to hear native records from The Sugarcubes (Sykurmolarnir). At some point I started to think French sounded pretty cool with Les Rita Mitsouko, Mylène Farmer, Air, M83 and Charlotte Gainsbourg. I had many opportunities to learn Spanish growing up but something about the culture (or my ex-wife) really put on the brakes. Even that curse was dispelled when I heard Rebekah Del Rio in “Mulholland Drive,” Shakira’s “Loba” domesticada and Juana Molina. Whatever your muse, let it carry you through the toil of vocabs and idioms.