Learning a new language is like beginning a new relationship: everything is the same (she's a woman, after all, it's just another bloody mean to express oneself) and everything is different. And like relationships, you have different phases: first, discovery, you learn quickly, everything seems easy and beautiful, so new ! Then, gosh, back to reality: like every other language, it's difficult ! Even the similar words have different meanings, no similar way to say something, misunderstandings, first angers... And finally (let's make it simple), if you go on, the long and unending road toward fluent speaking, full of joys, easier and easier but always discovering new difficulties, new words.
And what for ? For love. You learn better and faster if you're in love - the one who speaks the language you learn, the author, the culture you want to know better, to explore. If you really like an author, you have to read it in his language. Not only poetry, which is not translatable, but any book, movie, song. You'll never have the intime relationship native speakers have (bastards), but you're quite closer than with even the best translations. Remember that even in best translations, you can find errors, aproximations, blanks.
Not talking about the many books which were not translated and would have deserved it.
Not talking about talking... You can talk with people, express not only clichés and simplest things, go deeper and discover, well, they're not "german", "hungarian", "italian" but just people, as clever and stupid than anywhere else. It's sometimes a disapointing feeling when you can understand what people are telling around you in this charming language: same gossip, same rude feelings, same envy, same stubborness... That's the first moment. Then you hear something charming and you thank God for this marvellous Babel idea.
Enjoy !

Hi Mia, Jean,

Jean I really liked your post and wanted to reply for a long time but I couldn't think what to say, besides: Bravo!

I'll try though. One thing bothers me with it - I am not too interested in learning new languages. I know three, and though I would like to know ten, and I think it would be useful to read the authors I love, I am quite content to read them in translation, even if I know much is lost. (I'll add that I'm never really sure how much is lost. When you know the other language you think everything is lost and it's a complete travesty to read in translation, but when you don't many times it seems great and you enjoy it sometimes more.) I know this is something Europeans don't do. It seems that French people rarely read the great German novels except if they read German and vice versa, and similarly with Russian. Growing up in Israel, I read books from all languages equally, which gives one a different sense of general culture.

I digress. There are many small comments I can think of now that I started writing, like how in both people like the beginning but are afraid to start something as the entire road is scary, and so on, but here's an interesting one:
You can be languageless.

You can be single, you could have been at some point in a relationship and now single and alone. There is a calling for a relationship usually at this point. It might take a while, it might be translated to wanting friends, but there is a calling for a relationship. What can we learn from this on the time where one had no language?
Perhaps we can say it is like being thrown in a foreign country with no one speaking one's language, but I don't think that's a good analogy, as in this case you already have words for things, for what you see, and the problem is simply conveying it, while for a relationship you really do need an other.

Yes Roy, as you put it, you can be single. And my too easy language/relationship comparison is in a dead end...
For I have a great respect for monolinguals (barbaric word), they're a very good sign for any language, they mean the language is not in danger yet. I come from a region where a very ancient language is dying (don't panic, it's not french). And this language is dying because the few people for which it is still a native language are bilingual. In most cases, being bilingual is not considering the two languages you're speaking are equal, there is one considered language, the language people are expecting you to talk, and there is the native one. Linguistic world is a jungle, no pity to expect.
So it depends. If you're speaking a highly respected language (because your ancestors or the ancestors of the people who conquered your ancestors were very keen at bothering neighbours, invading people who didn't ask anything and so on), go for it, learn as many languages you can. But if you're on the other side, don't be too excited, deepen your knowledge of your own language, make something of it for it deserves it. If you're a good guy though, please learn some other language to translate the best books of it to your own language. It's a very good way to avoid chauvinism and silly nationalism (which is so easy a temptation in continental Europe).
For your remark on European people not reading other nations' great novels except when practising the language, well, I'm only speaking for the french people I know, but I think it's a sort of "minimum" to have read at least - in one's life and in french - the great Russians (Tolstoi, Dostoievski). For the rest, everybody makes his little personal trip in world litterature. Many people, even the less cultured, read foreign books in translations and some finnish, columbian, italian living authors can have a great success. The poor state of french litterature is maybe an explanation. But there is also a "translation fever". Being a lover of hungarian litterature (as any other), I'm stunned by the number and quality of translations to french. Translators are nowadays' saints (except french translators from english: they're so bad paid and in such a hurry, they use to translate only two thirds of the books, scrapping the many "unuseful" passages).
But yes, we have this sad tradition in this country not to learn other languages' litterature in school except if learning these languages.
Oh, and for your "being in a foreign country with no one speaking one's language", have you heard from this hungarian novel "Épépé" ? Sorry for the hungarian mania but the idea was so good (I had it before reading the book and was quite jealous he made it): a linguist arrives unexpectedly in a foreign country he doesn't even know the name (plane problem). So he tries to understand the language, to learn it, being a very good linguist, speaking many very different languages ... No way. The language is just incomprehensible, he can't even understand one word of it.
So, Mia, let's learn a language only for pleasure...