I expected not to be able to read street signs in China or store signs or…and I suspect it was easier to accept because of the difference in not being Chinese. Everyone in our hotels was conversant in English.

In Russia, no one spoke English, or claimed to, except for our guide. At the hotel and the shopping area, they claimed not to speak it. We were right on the sea in a nice hotel. Signs were unintelligible to us, but the people all looked like us.

I think the desire to communicate with others is a major motivator. As a child, I never expected I would travel outside the US to the extent that I have. In Europe, a small drive will get you to a place where you can practice the language you are learning. There is more motivation. If I had only learned the languages of my grandparents’ families, I would be speaking German, Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese, and French, but my relatives set all that aside to speak English.

I love the subtleties of Hebrew and Greek when studying the Bible. I do not speak or read or write the original languages, but with the help of Strong’s Concordance and other studies I’ve collected along the way, there are shifts in depth of understanding. I’ve wanted to study the Hebrew scriptures with Jews or know what it would be like to read and understand Greek for the New Testament.

I used to speak Yiddish, German, 2 dialects of Dutch, some Flemish, French, Italian, some Ladino, working on Spanish and Hebrew.

I’m reading Angela Carter’s Sadeian Women,just finished Interpreter of Maladies.
I keep rereading a lot of Spanish poetry- Neruda, Lorca.[ These thrill me beyond description]

I find that my motivation often coincides with my desire to communicate w/ others.
For example: After 2 days with lovely people who only spoke Russian [I had no one alive to teach me, as a girl], I found that I was understanding a good bit of what was being said, and making all sorts of efforts to repeat words, sounds.
Took many years of Latin, for the sheer pleasure of it.