Craze for foreign languages

Foreign-language institutes have mushroomed across the city. You can see the posters near bus stops and on walls near railway tracks: "Learn French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, etc"

People have various motives to learn languages. At French class, there's a young man who wants to work as a tourist guide and is learning English, French and German. There are those that are into it to take private classes and of course there are those that are looking at migrating to greener pastures.

I guess I belong to a minuscule minority that wants to learn a new language for non-commercial reasons. I just want to speak to more people in their native languages and try and do away with English as far as possible. Of course, I also want to watch TV programs, understand music and read books in other languages. There isn't money in these things but there are lots of points vis-a-vis diversity in life.