There's this weird thing Americans do, where we mock other Americans for only knowing one language (ignoring the huge swath of the US where knowing another language hasn't really been necessary until the population became more globalized, like I only picked up some French because my family is Quebecois and we were driving distance from the Canadian border) but then ALSO mock each other for deciding to learn another language if it's based on a fandom.
Like, deciding to try and Japanese because you like anime isn't stupid (I'm not talking here about the people who make it super weird), it's deciding to learn another language because you believe it will be useful to you. I *do* think Americans should, as a culture, learn more Spanish (but also we need to acknowledge that "Spanish" isn't a uniform language, and the languages spoken in Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina [as random examples] aren't the same), but also if I go visit my partner's family in Minnesota, knowing Spanish (or French!) wouldn't be particularly useful to me.
Outside the US, I've encountered people who are pleased, or at least amused, when you show that you're trying to learn the language of the country you're in. I think I made this one guy's DAY in Paris when I stumbled through asking if my parents could take a picture of his table (it made sense at the time). He applauded me and laughed and was so happy.
So maybe Americans shouldn't create this situation where you are shamed for not learning another language, but should only learn the right language in the right way? (Jesus, is EVERYTHING American this threaded through with Puritanical nonsense?)
All of this to say I've been experimenting with learning some Korean not just because of Kdramas, but because I edit a lot of papers by Korean authors, and understanding Korean sentence structure a little better helps me better understand where their English is going awry AND what they need to know to be able to fix it in the future. And I'm finding myself embarrassed or feeling like I need to explain myself for wanting to do a thing that a huge amount of society screams I should do...and that just sucks.
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