Whenever one starts learning a new language, all kinds of questions come up immediately: “Which language should I choose? What’s the best way to go about learning a language? What should I learn first? How can I get over the embarrassment of making mistakes?” These are all perfectly valid questions, but there is one that people often forget about: Why?
The what and how questions are what we seem to focus on first above any others. These give us structure and substance, but in the context of language learning they only get us so far. More importantly, they don’t…