I've been learning Indonesian for about two years now. I'm better at it than ever before. But I'm also questioning whether I should continue.
What use is it to learn a language for yourself, now that AI is as good as it is at translating? I think it's still useful if you want to be able to talk to people without pausing to check your phone for the translation. Also it's useful if you want to feel the full emotional impact of writing or speech. What are the connotations of words? What makes something a good joke or a bad joke? Or good poetry or bad poetry? Even prose has humor and poetry in it. Writing styles use sound, which make more sense if you know the language well. So it is still useful if you want to get close to a people group.
Do I want to do something like that? Before, it seemed clear. It could be useful to relate my writing to the Pancasila religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism) and also to Indonesian culture in general. This would best be done if I knew people there and read enough Indonesian literature to belong (or to have the substitute for belonging that writers have when they know a culture well-enough to write about it). But now that I think about it, I'm probably never going to be the most qualified person to do the task of relating to the Pancasila religions. It makes more sense for someone who is a "native speaker" in those religions and/or in Indonesia to do that. But maybe I would be the only person who would be willing and available.
Is it likely that I would be? Looking at my priorities, I think that if that day comes, it will be far in the future. First, I would try to focus on philosophy. Next, on relating my philosophy to the Western world (primarily to America, where I live). After that, hopefully someone more qualified than me would know about my writing, to get into the non-Western world. If not, then it might make sense for me to learn Indonesian. But I may never need to for my writing project.
What about for other reasons? I don't see myself doing development-related writing. Maybe move there to save money? I guess it's possible that that would make sense, but it's uncertain that it would. I can already pursue relatively superficial online friendships with people in Indonesia using machine translation. (The deeper ones run into problems with indirect communication, and the usual problems with the fragility of online relationships.) Learning a language is a pastime and mental workout. But I can find others.
If I need Indonesian, I can pick it up again. My two years of learning it should give me some foundation. I took Spanish classes in high school and college, and have put basically no effort into maintaining my Spanish since, but I find that what I did know I can bring back when I need to, given a bit of time to get back into it.
So my thought for now is to forget about learning Indonesian for now, unless and until I really need it.
