I sincerely have no idea how other people may feel about (not) speaking foreign languages, it’s up to them. Also, it’s not a competition with a single winner and many losers. It’s like being able to draw (I love doing that, I’m shit at it) or to dance (I can’t, but I love watching dance and ballet).
Personally, I don’t feel better because of the languages I speak. It’s just a decision I made, and then a question of putting in the required work (aka, time and efforts). But I am happy to be able to read/speak those languages.
As an avid reader, it’s something I always considered a necessity as I wanted to be able read books in their native language in order to fully appreciate them. It’s also so much better when interacting with other people, even for someone as shy as I am, to be able to speak in their native language even poorly and in a limited way (I’m not fluent in all of the few languages I understand, far from it).
I think it’s important to mention that as I too often met people that are afraid to learn and even more so that are unable to speak in a foreign language because they worry so much about being judged. It’s true we all are bad when we’re starting out but that’s still a real sad mistake to let that stop us as a vast majority of people will be more than welcoming to anyone trying to speak their language. For the record, I say that as someone who is monstrously shy (like, really) and speaks with a terrible French accent. So, I know perfectly well what it’s like to feel intimidated ;)
The one language I would love the most to learn but never managed to is Chinese.
There are writers, thinkers, and poets I would love to read not in a translation (and many more that are not even available in translation, sadly). But it’s also so complex to the point of being intimidating… This year, I almost managed to convince myself to apply to one of the schools teaching Chinese, here in Paris, but money and, like I said, me being utterly shy made it so that I not-that-accidentally missed the deadline.
Also, I’m starting to get old (well into my 50s) and my health not being that great I worry more and more it would be a waste of a seat that a much younger person could make better use of.
I can’t talk about younger generations, I’m well into my 50s, but I know they do a lot of things online. Heck, they even date online which to me seems as odd as wanting to eat an… air sandwich (so odd that I’m half expecting some app to popup offering them to have virtual sex too… for a monthly fee, obviously). But even like that there are still a lot of people (of all ages) that prefer IRL/physical/analog to online/digital to a subscription-based lifestyle. They’re just… less visible online (and they seldom complain about it online either) ;)
The thing with the Internet is that it creates this self-validation bubble, and I mean not just for political discussions where people expect to never have to listen to anything/anyone not agreeing with them, I mean it as a space itself, the Internet is good at downplaying alternatives to itself as a place to be and do things… Things like meeting people IRL, doing offline activities and hobbies. Who decided we needed to use a phone to watch a movie or to read a book or an app to meet someone we find attractive?
To me, all of that should have been one of the things education needed to talk more about to kids. If it ever tried, it obviously utterly failed. The real question being then: who decided we should stop doing all of those things our species have been doing for… ever. And why? And the answer may be as simple and obvious as: ourselves. It is us that did this to ourselves, it’s our own laziness and maybe our own fear, and our own stupidity.
I don’t have dedicated offline days, but i do have a lot of offline time so allow me to congratulate you nonetheless on that decision and wish you had an even better WE than usual when you will read my comment. Because, you’re 100% right:
And not just on WE ;)