Languages. Like, seriously?

Did I mention that I love languages? Well, if you didn’t already know that, then now you do. I really like the idea of being able to speak a language other than the one I am fluent in already, plus there are endless benefits to knowing more than one language. Also, my plan for life is to move to Europe and become a linguist. At my school, I am currently taking two languages: Spanish and French. I started with Spanish in seventh grade, when I had to pick a language to study. My family and I spoke a little bit of Spanish, we had been to South America, and I decided that it would be most useful to know Spanish. With French, the story is a little different. Remember how my last blog post was about Paris, and the amazing trip I took there? Well that is where I first realized that I love languages, and that if I love languages, and I love France, then I should take French! So here I am taking my first year of French and my third year of Spanish, and loving them both.

If you are like any of the other people I have talked to about this love of mine, then you are probably thinking to yourself ‘she likes languages, why?’ I regret to say that I don’t actually know why I love them, I just do. What bothers me is that whenever I tell people that I am taking two languages, they look at me like I don’t have a head. Their expression says ‘why?’ And although I love them to death, I have two friends who gave me the hardest time about choosing to take French. We were in the car one day during the summer discussing our schedules for the new year. Our conversation went somewhat like this:

“Wait, you’re taking French?” friend one asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Why? Like, French is like, the most pointless language to learn, like ever, I mean, like seriously? There’s like, one country that speaks French, in like, the whole world!” friend two said.

Let me stop you here. Do you hear the way she is speaking? LIKE, I mean LIKE really, LIKE. Okay so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but it made me even more angry that I already was. She was talking to me about how ‘stupid’ learning French was, yet she was talking like a fourteen year old valley girl. Sorry, moving on.

“Yeah, I mean if you wanted to take another language, you should’ve taken Chinese.” friend one stated.

A map of the number of French speaking countries!
There's a lot, right?!
Image credit: www.ielanguages.com

“Yeah! Like once, I was like talking to my dad and he was like, ‘Never take French, like it is like a dying language and it will be like a like, waste of time to learn.” friend two added.

This put me over the top. Why learn French? First of all, why do they care what I do? Second, no language is a waste of time to learn. And third, shut up! I was so mad I had to take deep breaths to make sure I didn’t punch both of them in the throat.

Anyway, now that you know how I feel about languages, I should probably wrap this up. Just remember, never talk to me about how stupid languages are, unless you want to be jabbed in your windpipe.

P.S: I feel like I should end on a lighter and less threatening note, so I just want to say that I have never actually punched anybody in the throat. :)