I'm a native English speaker from the US, with no designs to move abroad... unless things get super scary here, fingers crossed! My wife is also from the US, and she speaks decent enough Italian, though her skill has faded a little over time. So I don't really have a traditional "need" motivation for learning a language. However, I enjoy the prospect of expanding my world outlook via languages, and over the years, I've explored a couple dozen of them to varying degrees, but have mastered none. Every time I get going with one of them, I convince myself that I'm not doing the "right" one, and then move to another one, only to have the process repeat. On one hand, I don't like the idea of being monolingual, but on the other hand, I feel like every option I come across doesn't resonate enough for me to devote thousands of hours to it, particularly at the expense of all the other options I'm leaving on the table. For example, it would be one thing for me to say "I love everything about Turkey, I'm going all in with Turkish"... but I just don't get that kind of feeling from any language. Some examples of thoughts I've had:
While learning a European language: "I'm tired of European hegemony when it comes to all things global, I'm going to focus on a non-European language" / While learning a non-European language: "Am I really going to take my limited vacation time to go on a family trip to Kazakhstan?"
While learning a language with gendered nouns: "I don't want to have to memorize whether milk is masculine or feminine." / While learning a genderless language: "Oh good, no genders but there are 15 noun cases."
While learning a popular language: "Everything in this language already has English subs and dubs." / While learning a less popular language: "There's not enough content!"
Obviously I'm focusing on the negatives in these thoughts... but my overall sentiment is that I don't have a strong attraction to any one culture to withstand the constant "grass is always greener" thoughts. Has anyone else been in a similar boat? Did you just toughen up and pick one (by throwing a dart at a map or via a more sophisticated method)? Or did you just let it go, content to live the monolingual life? Or continue to be a vagabond amongst the throng of available tongues?
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