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?

Aside from things people already mentioned, Spanish-speaking places seem to be more English-speaking friendly than French-speaking places (e.g. big parts of Canada that will refuse to serve you if you don't speak French).

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

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Do the Latin American countries refuse to even attempt to communicate if you don't speak Spanish? 🙃

Huh, my experience is the exact opposite. In some Latin American countries, lots of people barely speak English, whereas France doesn't have that problem.