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this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Don't forget that ASL is the third most used language in the United States! No point in focusing exclusively on spoken languages, right?
In any case, I find it questionable to talk about languages in terms of "usefulness" like that, trying to measure "usefulness" based on an objective "number of speakers minus percentage who speak a language I already speak": there are plenty of reasons why a language can be personally useful to somebody, plenty of reasons to want to learn a language aside from how many new people one can talk to; and heck, learning one seemingly useless language can be great for building the skills and knowledge for taking on another language, or for becoming more flexible in using one's own first language.
That being said, you're not wrong to call the pedestal that French is put on compared to other languages a product of racism... Actually, I'd argue that a lot of foreign language education isn't even meant to get you proficient in that language, but rather more for the sake of, like, standardized school tests. Thus the languages that are put on the highest pedestal are just going to be the ones where the infrastructure already exists for getting butts in seats and tests on desks.