Should I learn a language that I want to learn but probably won't use a whole lot, or a language that I'm not too enthused about but will be very useful?

I'm pretty interested in learning Japanese as I enjoy many of their movies, etc., but I probably won't use it very much unless I make some Japanese friends or get a Japanese girlfriend (to be completely honest though, they're not completely unlikely..)

I will need to learn Spanish at some point in time since it will be very useful for my career in the medical field and there are many Spanish speaking people in my area (California). I already speak it at an high-elementary level as well. However I'm not particularly excited about it and find myself losing motivation every time I try to get serious about it.

I'm Korean so Japanese will likely be much easier for me than for English speakers (since the grammar is pretty much identical, pronunciation and many words are very similar, etc.), so I've been thinking maybe I'll use it as a "practice" language to get the ball rolling. Once I become somewhat proficient in Japanese, I'll move onto Spanish, then French, then so on. I probably won't bother with Kanji or writing or anything; I'll primarily be focusing on speaking and listening.

But at the same time I feel like I might just be wasting time learning a language I won't be using very much, whereas I'm sure I can find many opportunities to speak Spanish in my area and it will probably prove very useful for my career in the future. So I sometimes feel like I should just forget about Japanese and try to power through learning Spanish even if I may not enjoy it as much.

What are your thoughts on this?

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