What motivated you to learn another language?

Hello everyone. So I tried to post this yesterday but the post got removed, I had tried to word it a bit differently so hopefully this will stick.

SO this is more of a general question , but I am curious what motivated you to learn another language?

For me, i was always interested in my target language since i was a kid, it was very useful for travel and it opened a lot of opportunities. As a blind person, the main benefit for me was speaking with locals, who were often genuinely surprised I knew the language. However, living in an anglophone country, I noticed our education system put so little emphasis on foreign language study. I think I only had about 40 minutes of foreign language study twice a week and that was it, learning another language outside of text books was never really encouraged and in order to improve it I had to get private classes outside of secondary school. By the time i got to university, out of the people I knew back then hardly anyone went on to study modern foreign language degrees or had little or no interest in language learning, and I noticed the numbers studying foreign language degrees were tiny compared to courses such as business and marketing, probably due to economic value and other factors, and those that I knew who went on to study language degrees would later tell me they got little use out of the degree and wished they had studied something else. I am also a music producer, so learning the target language gave me the opportunity to write my own songs in the language, perhaps a more unusual use of the language. Looking back, I suppose it was not surprising that not many went on to study foreign language degrees, especially given the way foreign languages in general are taught here. Many people here study a foreign language for 12 to 14 years, but because the curriculum is narrow, mostly focused on rote learning and learning sample answers for exams, very little emphasis on listening skills and oral exams. the result is that after some 12, 14 years studying a language many leave school hardly able to converse in the language, and similar with other languages, upon leaving secondary school the learner often never needs to use it again resulting in many people forgetting the language altogether unless they continue further study or have exposure to many native speakers, or use apps such as duolingo.

I have also found that a lot of university courses at home have dropped the foreign language requirement , it use to be the case that you needed to have 1 or 2 foreign languages in order to get into certain courses. I am also fully aware the investment and time it takes to learn another language like any hobby, especially if you are a self learner with only so much time is vast and that not everyone is interested in learning a foreign language. Nor do I think that learning a language should be mandatory in schools despite the many benefits it brings, the opportunities it opens etc. Instead, I strongly believe that all who want to learn a language should have all the resources and material available to them and should be allowed to engage in the education system to the extent that they desire, and that schools should have a wide ranging curriculum where students have the ability to explore their options and what is of interest to them, I didn’t have many options as to what I could study for example, especially when it came to university. For instance, in the end I had to pick what course was most accessible for me, but not necessarily what course I was most interested in, which I was not that happy about to be honest.

Finally, I would agree with a few other posts i have come across on this sub, that, like anything if you’re not prepared to put in the hundreds, and perhaps thousands of hours required to get at least some bit proficient that language learning requires because that is the reality of it, there are no short cuts, then there is no point in going further with it and you would be better off pursuing something else that might be of interest to you.