Questions for linguaphiles

[cattiechaos]

This is a departure from the norm, but I didn't think anyone would mind if I asked a few questions to satisfy my own curiosity. Why are you a linguaphile? How many languages do you speak fluently, which are you learning, and why did you choose to learn them? On a related note, I feel that a major problem in many American high schools is that they seldom enforce the value of learning languages. The requirements for my school were to take two consecutive years of a language and as we all know, that's not enough time to become proficient in anything (well, it's possible, but the typical student would not become fluent in two years in a high school setting). I see other countries such as Finland requiring students to not only become fluent in their native language but English and Swedish as well, and I regret that we don't have something similar in my own country. Do you as a linguaphile have any idea as to how we can encourage language learning?

I'd love to hear from you, so please feel free to share if you are so inclined. Thanks for your time and I apologize if this post is bothersome to anyone!