Have you ever learned a new language only to give up after a few weeks?

[kenthoang28]

Hi everyone!

    Have you ever given up of learning a new language after a few days or weeks? I get used to it. I had a plan to study Chinese three years ago, and I worked hard on this. However, I had no more motivation after 2 weeks, then i gave it up. It happened so many times like until now. Right now, I am also working hard on Chinese again. I hope i won't give up again and able to make my dream come true.

   

[Sarah676]

This happened to me with Chinese (specifically Mandarin) as well. I've been studying Japanese for a while now and really enjoy it, so I figured I'd give Mandarin a go as well. Sadly, I found it to be a lot harder than Japanese. The hardest thing for me to learn was the tones - I just couldn't get my pronunciation right and I got discouraged. I hope to take it up again though, when I have more time to devote to it.

[WizardOfStaz]

Yes, I've done this a few times, especially with Japanese. I can't count how many times I've picked up my Japanese study materials only to shelve them all a few weeks later. I used to do this with Spanish and French as well. I studied them with Duolingo and would just not log in after a few weeks of practice. It's especially frustrating if you wait too long after giving up, then have to start all over.

[jodig]

Sadly, I've done that too with Polish. From January till June I was living with 2 polish flatmates. I instantly enrolled on online courses to start and pick up the language. I was excited, but sadly my flatmates wanted to improve their Spanish too, so we couldn't do it all at the same time. After 2-3 months I gave up. I still want to get back to it, but now that I won't even have someone to practice with, I have no motivation.  :cry:

[wannalurnspanish]

  On 10/31/2013 at 2:55 PM, kenthoang28 said:

Hi everyone!

    Have you ever given up of learning a new language after a few days or weeks? I get used to it. I had a plan to study Chinese three years ago, and I worked hard on this. However, I had no more motivation after 2 weeks, then i gave it up. It happened so many times like until now. Right now, I am also working hard on Chinese again. I hope i won't give up again and able to make my dream come true.

 

Yep, Chinese was the language that did it for me. 2 or 3 weeks in and....nothing. I was thinking, "Why did I want to learn THAT?" I'm sure I'll be motivated to do it sometime in the future when I actually have time, but for me it's not really a priority, so it's one of those things that gets pushed to the back burner.

[2012bulgara77]

I am italian techer and started to study spanish , because the school I have worked had no spanish teachers at this moment. After 4 weeks I learnd 3000 spanish words and my boss appoint me to teach spanish as well. It's incredible but  trought. The point is that italian and spanish linguages are very similar linguages grammaticaly and lexicaly , therefore I learned so muth.

[xxxxxx]

Learning a new language is not that easy based on my own experience. Right now I am still studying Korean language because my husband is a Korean so I really have to study it. There are times when I want to give up because Hangeul is not easy to learn especially the pronunciation of the words. But I have no choice and I have to pass up to the last level.

[kenthoang28]

Thank you for all you sharing, guys!

  We all had this problem, however i hope you guys will study harder to able to speak well the language which you want to learn.

  You guys should watch TV shows, or music. It helps me not to get bored when I learn new language. Try to get over of our problem. :grin:

[Baburra]

I voted yes, but I wouldn't say I've totally given up on it. I'm planning to learn French, but at the time I started, I really didn't know what my motivation was to begin with anyway. It wasn't like I was planning on utilizing it at the time. I still retained a lot of useful words and phrases from my lesson too, so it wasn't a complete loss. In the near future, I hope to spend a good amount of time in France, so hopefully, I can get some practice in before that time comes, and until then, I just put my French lessons on hold and I try to focus on the languages I think I might be able to utilize sooner.

[Permidian]

Yes, I have.

It was early this year actually. My now ex girlfriend is Chinese, so I wanted to learn Cantonese (Not that it was needed, she lived all her life in the U.S so obviously she is completely fluent in English, but I just thought it would be nice and fun learning it for her, and admittedly I wanted to impress her too).

I learned some vocabulary and basic sentences, but to be honest I find the pronunciation so difficult that I pretty much gave up after a while.

[mareebaybay]

I have not done anything like this before. Although I could see myself doing something like this. Even though I have a great work ethic, learning languages is something totally different. It takes hard work and dedication to commit yourself to learning a new language.

[kitkat0124]

When I was in high school, I tried learning Spanish, but when my friend stop learning and I have no one to talk to I also stop learning. It is so sad that I should have tried learning harder and did not stop. I never thought that I will need to learn this language now because of my work.

[Miya]

Nope, I've never given up learning a language. Sometimes I learn a language and then I forget it and don't go back to it, but I've never given up after a few weeks.

[igorrsobral]

Yes, French. I used to have a pretty open idea about learning French, always sounded very classy and respectful to hear. But when I got to the point of learning its grammar, I dropped it dead. It's horrifying and I can't get myself to pick it up again. I've given up French for good.

[Qamra]

Oh yes I did  :shy: I started learning Swedish and then I just gave up out of laziness and lack of materials. It was back in Poland around 7 years ago and I didn't have my own PC. It was hard to get find a good source to learn from. I had one book that was written in 80s lol. I just thought it will need to wait for better times, but then life got busy and I never came back to learning Swedish.

[Androu1]

Kind of. I was taking a course in Russian (was a free course, too) but that was a while ago. Problem was that it was in the morning and I was going to start college... and college classes were in the morning too. So yeah, I couldn't continue with the course.

I also gathered some material to learn the Japanese language and I was learning the basics, but I found it too time consuming and decided to stop and focus on Italian (which is the language I'm learning at college).

[rgaz83]

I do this all the time! I've never completely given up, but I have bursts of interest, followed by periods where I completely forget to study or do anything related to the target language. I have done this with French, Spanish, German, and Esperanto. I have also done it with Japanese, but I don't think I ever really seriously studied that; it was more of a whim, like Russian was at one point.  :grin:

[2012bulgara77]

  On 11/2/2013 at 1:28 PM, 2012bulgara77 said:

I am italian techer and started to study spanish , because the school I have worked had no spanish teachers at this moment. After 4 weeks I learnd 3000 spanish words and my boss appoint me to teach spanish as well. It's incredible but  trought. The point is that italian and spanish linguages are very similar linguages grammaticaly and lexicaly , therefore I learned so muth.

[geoffyd]

Absolutely! I've started learning a new language a couple of times (Dutch most recently) and given up. I think it is just a matter of realizing that it won't ever be very useful to me, and that my time would be better spent maintaining the useful skills I already have in other languages.

[ValerieAnne]

Yes, I've started a couple languages and then stopped after a couple of weeks. I usually always pick them back up after awhile, so I think it's because they are languages that not many people speak - well nobody I know anyway.

[russianrocket]

Ha, yes many times. I have tried to learn many languages and funnily enough only succeeded in English so far. Well, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this.

[pandandesign]

I learned Japanese when I was in high school, which I dropped out the class in less than 3 months. I found it difficult to learn because I was having a hard time understanding the kanji. I also failed one of the mini midterm examination, which I thought it was impossible for me to pass the class with an "A".

[MyNameIsNotDenzel]

Yeah, I have..... only to pick it back up again and to stop later. This is a cycle I go through periodically.

[sulayman]

I have done that a couple of times during high school. Back then you had to pick a second language and for me i felt as though it was a complete waste of time and they eventually changed the rules and so i dropped any second language as soon as i could.

[jbepp]

Yes, I have. It was Japanese.

Since I like anime and manga I decided to give it a try. After 2 weeks I memorized kana so I was ready to learn kanji. I memorized like 10 kanjis and then gave up because some kanjis were really difficult and I just didn't have the time.

I still want to learn Japanese though. Maybe I'll do it after German.