So… two people have requested that I answer this question and I don’t know Quora well enough to know whether these are real people or bots. I’m neither a linguist, a teacher nor a Hispanic person, and I could have easily lived a well-off life without speaking a word of Spanish. I learned Spanish because I wanted to, not because it’s “important”. I kind of feel compelled to answer the questions people ask of me, but it would be nice to have some validation that the two people who asked me to answer this question have read it and are real people, because I’m kind of worried that Quora is making fake requests just to get me to pump out content 🙂. That said, I’ve been on Quora for less than a month and am not quite sure how this game is played.

So I’m going to continue, but answer the question “Why was Spanish important for me to learn?”

I have a self-assessed Spanish level of C1 or so, so speak it pretty well. Since I speak Portuguese too, that means I can go to pretty much any country in South or Central America, as well as Spain and communicate just fine. This is pretty cool. Is it important? Who knows. But it’s damn cool.

I’m not going to trot out a bunch of facts about how useful Spanish is in this world, because the other 90+ answers have done an ample job of that. That said, “important” is a subjective term and just because a language is widespread and useful doesn’t mean that it’s important to a given person. I have two jobs now and the one that’s providing most of my income as of this writing has absolutely zero use or incentive for me to know Spanish, so despite the important role of Spanish in this world, I could have easily done without it.

That said. I find my life much richer for knowing Spanish. First of all, Hispanic people are incredibly warm, welcoming and nice. A “leader” in the US government whose name I won’t mention trash-talked Mexicans coming to live here, but with very few exceptions, I’ve found Mexicans to be some of the most decent people around. And I felt much safer in Ensenada, Mexico than certain parts of the tram ride from the San Diego Amtrak station to San Ysidro border.

My dream is to retire on the cheap and the cost of living and property costs are much lower in many Spanish-speaking countries than in the US. And the fact that I can talk to anyone opens doors to financial savings while still having a decent quality of life that aren’t available to those who don’t speak Spanish. Sometimes, I take my knowledge of Spanish so much for granted that it’s weird for me to see an American in Mexico struggling to comprehend and then I realize that the language barrier is very real for some and that it prevents quality experiences while traveling as well as possibly having quality interactions with one’s Hispanic relatives.

I’m a sci-fi buff and love the notion of parallel universes. And although, I can’t travel to other planets and galaxies, I believe that speaking a foreign language and interacting with locals in another country in that language is the closest real-life analog that we’ll ever get to experience parallel universes in this lifetime.

English speakers know that there are fascinating differences among the variants of English spoken in England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Africa, Malta, or wherever else English is one of the national languages. We can all speak in a way so as to understand each other, but there are colorful, fascinating differences in words, expressions, idioms and spelling that add a degree of richness and vibrance to the exchange.

Now just imagine that scenario multiplied by a gazillion and you get a flavor for what it means to have a lifetime of possibilities to explore different Hispanic cultures and countries. We in the US have Sesame Street as a child; Mexico has Odisea Burbujas and probably every Mexican knows that show. Do people in Colombia or Peru know about that show? Who knows. There are probably equivalents in those countries.

Are you starting to understand how deep this goes?

And yet, they can all understand each other to a certain extent, so every now and then, you get a telenovela like Muñeca Brava from a certain country (in this case, Argentina), which becomes a phenomenon in many other Hispanic countries, and yet we’re completely unaware of these things in the US. Not to mention all the children’s stories, TV series, novels, pop music groups, etc. It’s humbling to me that there’s no way I can even scratch the surface of this diversity and richness in my lifetime and that moreover, no one Hispanic person from a given country could ever hope to do this either.

So these are my reasons why Spanish is important to me, which probably differ very greatly from why Spanish might be important to someone else.