In this post, I’ll be decoding different motivations for learning a new language and why someone might decide to take it up as a hobby. Understanding your motivation is crucial if you want to have success in your studies and become fluent long term. Of course, people can have many different motivations for learning a new lingo so your reasonings can be a combination of these few!
Type of person: you are a heritage learner
Your motivation for language learning stems from the fact that you feel that you should know a language, be able to talk fluently in it but you can’t. You want to be able to talk to relatives and not be mocked for having a ‘Western’ accent. Your studies are fuelled by your sense of obligation and duty to preserving your culture and also joy when you are able to pick up your family’s language and talk to your relatives! If you are learning a minority language, or a less common one, you may struggle to be motivated due to a lack of resources or some people even making fun of your efforts. Finding a language tutor and spending time speaking with your family in the language regardless can help you make progress after all.
Type of person: You are learning for love or friendship
Your friendship group is entirely made up of friends whose background is a different culture or you have fallen in love with someone from a different culture. What motivates you to learn is to deeply understand that special person or to be able to make jokes and ‘get’ your friends more. If they have ‘secret’ conversations you will be able to understand. If this is you, you will probably end up being someone who is very conversational in your chosen language. You’ll get all the slang and not someone reciting from a textbook!
Type of person: you are learning for travel
You are the type of person who wants to immerse fully into the culture of your chosen travel destination. You aren’t the type of tourist who expects everyone just to talk to English! You might be complacent with knowing just a simple hi OR you could fall love with the place, move there and want to become fluent to feel more at home!
Type of person: you are the person who wants to know as many languages as humanly possible!
You just are that person. You collect the intricacies of as many languages as possible just because. You enjoy astounding people when they realise you can speak their language! The distance you go to for each language varies from being conversational to I-can-talk-about-the-legal-system-and-everything-else but still! You are the ultimate language learner, and nothing could be easier.
Type of person: you are learning for religion
My personal perspective: I am a Muslim who can read the Arabic script of the Qu’ran but cannot understand 99% of it. If I want to understand what I am reading, I have to use an English translation side by side to decipher the messages in my Holy book. My motivation comes from a duty and obligation to my religion but also love of my faith. Which is just as well because Classical Arabic is very hard and I’ll need that and more to power through!
I hope you enjoyed my post! As I said before, your motivation is probably going to come from a mixture of these types, as everyone’s journey and motivations are different!
Iftiin Learns 
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