Heh, I thought you were addressing a much more abstract consideration about the global average difficulty of learning languages based on both their relatedness

Heh, I thought you were addressing a much more abstract consideration about the global average difficulty of learning languages based on both their relatedness to other languages and their internal complexities are irregularities (see my reply elsewhere in the thread). I didn't realize you were actually thinking more about economic and political considerations. Edit: I feel like many people do learn languages "for the past" or "for the future". For example, many people study ancient languages partly to learn about ancient cultures and ancient history, while many Mandarin learners in the U.S. through the 1990s and 2000s said one motivation was that "China is going to be more important in the future" or something to that effect.