Reply #7: I would have thought that there were only three reasons for learning a language

[non sociopath skin]

a) Because you want to be able to people who speak it.
b) Because you wish to study the language, history or another aspect of the relevant culture.
c) Because you decide on a whim that you'd like to learn it.

As you say, learning a language is challenging and I think there has to be a damn good reason for teaching it to someone who doesn't particularly want to learn it.

I did Latin at school in the 60s for four years and somehow managed to scrape a GCE pass. I hated it, every minute of it - though I loved my French, German and Russian classes. And having obtained a degree in English and taught English in school for nearly thirty years, I found my Latin to be of little or no benefit.

It's a specialist subject. Let's leave it that way.

The Skin