Español o française? Learn a language because you love it, not because it’s useful | Letters

2026-02-16 - 17:05

Readers respond to an article by Gary Nunn who says learning Spanish has never been cooler Gary Nunn misses the point of language learning in seeing it as a numbers game (Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push British children to learn French?, 10 February). Evaluating a language by its usefulness is reductive – about as soul-destroying as telling a passionate mathematician that they don’t need to bother learning complex theorems because a computer could do it. I did two language A-levels (German and Japanese) and went on to do a Japanese degree at university. Despite Japanese being less “useful” than Spanish in terms of the number of speakers, it has enriched my life in countless ways. Continue reading...