I've often received comments that my choice of majors and minor is an unusual one. People generally understand my psychology major, but when it comes to my Asian studies major and my Japanese minor, I get a lot of questions asking why. "Why are you minoring in a language?" "Why choose that combination?" "Why do you like Japan?"
I'm never quite sure how to answer these questions. Because I think the language is beautiful? Because I'd like to live and work there someday? Because I feel a connection to the culture? While all of these are true, they're all parts of a simpler answer:
Because I love it.
As a country with two immediate neighbors and an incredibly inflated collective ego, we in the United States don't feel a need to learn any language other than English. While Spanish is often taught in schools, its importance is low on the priority chart, and often it becomes an elective overshadowed by more tempting prospects such as art or music. People who speak more than one language are considered impressive, but unimportant. For a country whose language arguably steals the most from others, we have an incredible reluctance to learn a language rather than our own.
We are, however, an anomaly. Schools across the world prioritize language learning from elementary school into the final years of high school. It is not uncommon, especially in Europe, to be fluent in three or more languages. Even in Japan, whose population is 98.5 percent Japanese, English is taught as part of the core curriculum alongside math and literature.
While language learning is meant to be emphasized during early childhood years, what people don't realize is that even college isn't too late. I know far too many people who took three semesters of Spanish to fulfill the requirement and then never touched another language again. While Spanish is a beautiful language and an increasingly important one, if it doesn't interest you, take another one.
Take Russian because it's all your great-grandmother spoke and you want to feel closer to her. Take Italian because you want to go to Italy someday. Take Swahili because you think it's beautiful. Take sign language because you want to understand your deaf neighbor. Take Arabic, or Chinese, or Hebrew. Take a language not because you feel obligated to, but because you want to. Take a language because it will expand your worldview, and help you understand cultures and viewpoints that are different than your own.Take a language because you love it, and the reasons why you love it don't matter.
It's hard, I won't lie. I've always been bad at foreign languages, even Romance languages which are so close to our own, and I happened to fall in love with a country whose tongue is incredibly different from English. I work hard and I study and I immerse myself because I know that some day, when I am fluent, it will have been worth it. I hope that you, the reader of this article, no matter how old you are, can find one that you love, too.
A note: this is written from a place of privilege. Not everyone has the time or means to learn a language. That puts a responsibility on us, those who do have the time and means, to take advantage and make language learning accessible to all who want or need to study it. Normalize it, and it will become universal.
