Español o français? Learn a language because you love it, not because it’s useful

‘Spanish absolutely deserves its growing place, but framing this as a zero-sum contest does a disservice to pupils and teachers alike.’ Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Gary Nunn misses the point of language learning in seeing it as a numbers game (Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push British children to learn French?, 10 February). Evaluating a language by its usefulness is reductive – about as soul-destroying as telling a passionate mathematician that they don’t need to bother learning complex theorems because a computer could do it.

I did two language A-levels (German and Japanese) and went on to do a Japanese degree at university. Despite Japanese being less “useful” than Spanish in terms of the number of speakers, it has enriched my life in countless ways.