Communicating with people is practical. When I came to the US for the first time English was very, very practical. My life depended on it. And it still does, but there's a world of difference between the amount of effort needed back then and now. It's become much, much easier.DaemonR wrote:The reasons why you learn a spoken language and why you learn a programming language are completely different. You learn a spoken language to communicate with people, you learn a programming language because it's practical or for learning experience.
You get learning experience with every new thing you learn. You also learn stuff for fun.
I learned programming for fun. At the beginning I did not even think of making it my career, something practical. I just enjoyed it. So far I've never had real practical need to speak Spanish as I don't live or work with people who only speak Spanish. But I learned it nonetheless. And then I went on to learn a bit of and about other languages. Why do I need all that if Russian and English are enough for me ~99% of the time? 'cause it's fun!
True, there are some quite unconventional things that are hard to master when you need to obtain a lot of new knowledge and acquire new skills and when very little can be transferred from the past experience.DaemonR wrote:Regardless, it even deters people from learning spoken languages. Eg. A lot of people give up on learning Mandarin because the same words can have entirely different meanings just by slight differences in intonation.
