I notice among people I talk to more enthusiasm toward learning French than Spanish. This confuses me; my feeling is that Spanish unlocks far more countries and speakers than French does and so is a more natural first choice.

What do people think motivates this choice?

when i was in grade school in the US (back in the 90s), the foreign language classes were French and Spanish. i recall a pretty clear socio-economic divide between those in French (tended to be white, upper-middle class) and those in Spanish (middle class, more ethnically diverse, didn't care to learn the language).

building /quidli 🦑, casting in /justinahn, daoing in /🍊 & /🟪

i feel like this represents how many people approach learning a new language in general: Enthusiast, someone who has the means to and is passionate enough to learn even if seemingly impractical; vs Pragmatist, someone who's forced to learn in order to increase survival odds, which is also the case with English today