Motivating the study of language

I've written about why I think I should keep learning Acadian French: [[ No stories ]] I think connecting with your heritage is an example of a good, well-motivated reason to study a language. And I do believe you need a good reason, because language acquisition is a lot of work. It takes literal years of patience and practice to get to a point where you can comfortably communicate with other people. Lucky for me, I've studies French for most of my life. More than anything, keeping Acadian French just means using it. Improving my confidence with it. The hard part is over. The original title of this article was "Should I keep studying Toki Pona?" But before I attempt to answer that question, I want to talk about another language I've been trying to learn for a long time that I'm not able to "just use". Namely, Mandarin. I've been trying to learn Mandarin since I was in middle or high school, so maybe near a decade now. Not continuously, of course. I think if a kid was continuously…