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Have you ever gave up trying to learn another language before?


hades_leae

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YES! I have given up many times, one time I was to the point that I literally thought I would never be able to learn any type of language, this was not true but just that my heart and focus was no in the learning. I have given up but that doesn't mean I won't try again.

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3 hours ago, abonnen said:

YES! I have given up many times, one time I was to the point that I literally thought I would never be able to learn any type of language, this was not true but just that my heart and focus was no in the learning. I have given up but that doesn't mean I won't try again.

I like your approach, don't give up on it becasue it just might come in handy in your future. It's also a good feeling when you accomplish it for yourself.

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Yes, I have with French.  I am a native English speaker and have a good knowledge of German.  I thought I would try French, but I lost interest fairly quickly and let it go.  I don't regret it as I focused on other things.

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I gave up Japanese initially, then picked it back up again. It was a chore going through stuff I had done before but only vaguely remembered and it taught me a lesson about motivation. Even if you do a little bit each day, that's better than giving up. Because as soon as you go even a week without study, your brain starts leaking information. I think the first time I attempted Japanese, I kind of underestimated what a beast it can be. I was way too cocky about it; thought it would be a walk in the park due to the insane amount of free time I had. That was one of my mistakes too: expecting way too much from myself and blowing myself out with too much study each day.

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8 minutes ago, Staralfur1999 said:

I gave up Japanese initially, then picked it back up again. It was a chore going through stuff I had done before but only vaguely remembered and it taught me a lesson about motivation. Even if you do a little bit each day, that's better than giving up. Because as soon as you go even a week without study, your brain starts leaking information. I think the first time I attempted Japanese, I kind of underestimated what a beast it can be. I was way too cocky about it; thought it would be a walk in the park due to the insane amount of free time I had. That was one of my mistakes too: expecting way too much from myself and blowing myself out with too much study each day.

Yeah, sometimes overdoing it works against you just the same as not doing enough. Honestly, when I think about re-familiarising myself with languages via a full on refreshers course I feel intimidated. It seems a little daunting to me now as I have tons of other things I want to take care of at the moment. Maybe one day I'll gain the courage and just do it.

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Just now, Yoshie said:

Yeah, sometimes overdoing it works against you just the same as not doing enough. Honestly, when I think about re-familiarising with languages via a full on refreshers course I feel intimidated. It seems a little daunting to me now as I have tons of other things I want to take care of at the moment. Maybe one day I'll gain the courage and just do it.

Yeah, man, don't worry too much. One of the keys is not being hard on yourself, I think. Which was a problem I had. I would just constantly berate myself for not doing enough and the standards I was asking of myself where just insane.

 

I'm not sure if you know about the flashcard program Anki. You probably do as it's pretty well-known. But it's perfect for casual studying because it uses spacial repetition. So if you want to just casually get back into learning, that's probably a pretty good gate-way if you don't already use it.

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+Staalfur1999 Thanks for the encouragement and yes I am hard on myself a lot (guess you noticed). 

No I don't know about it but thanks for the heads up and I will certainly look into that.

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12 hours ago, Yoshie said:

+Staalfur1999 Thanks for the encouragement and yes I am hard on myself a lot (guess you noticed). 

No I don't know about it but thanks for the heads up and I will certainly look into that.

Ah, well, I just think being hard on ourselves comes naturally when we take on tasks like learning a language. Mainly because it's one of those things that you wish you could learn overnight, then get frustrated that it takes an almost endless amount of time (because language learning is a constant process, even when you're fluent).

 

No worries, I hope it helps :)

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On 8/2/2016 at 2:32 AM, AExAVF said:

I never got the motivation to study Arabic.  I lived in Saudi Arabia for around 7 years, but we mostly speak in the English language, as it is the language of business in the Kingdom.  It's like I am being forced to study Arabic, and there's not much motivation for me if it will be forced upon.  I only studied it because it is a requirement in our classes to understand the language. 

Yeah that is strange, and would be a little frustrating to have to deal with.  It is strange for a lot of reasons, though too, where I would not entirely expect English to be the language of business over there, and while it does not completely surprise me it is still something worth noting.  To have to be forced to learn a language that you are not really going to need to use, even after living there for seven years, seems a little foolish.

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The reasons I gave up on learning another language were mere by convenience purposes. There were another things I required to do that also needed amount of time I was investing on them. I'm not entirely gave up though, I just save it for a future.

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I gave up learning French months ago because I found it overly challenging and not very practical since I have no French speaking people in my life, so little opportunity to use it.  I chose to study other languages instead. 

 

This week I took some time to think about what my language priorities are and whether I should continue learning Spanish or put it off for now and learn Italian instead.  It was a very difficult decision for me as it has been with other people here too.  The pros to choosing Spanish were that I'm already more than 1/4 of the way to finishing my Spanish study and it's the second most commonly spoken language in the country.  But I don't exactly have Spanish speaking people in my life right now so why bother if I'm only planning to use it theoretically?  I tried to study more Spanish this week and realized my priorities have changed and I've lost the passion for Spanish as a result.  So I put Spanish on hold and will save it for a time when I actually need it.

 

I made the decision to learn Italian instead even though I have to start from the very beginning.  I happen to have more passion and more use for it given my language priorities.  I'm in a relationship with someone who speaks Italian and I would like to be able to talk with her in Italian, there are a lot of great movies and music that use extensive Italian dialogue including some of my favorite films, I'm fascinated by Italian for being so directly related by Latin, I've always wanted to visit Rome someday and I have a thing for lesser known languages and my curiosity gravitates more towards them rather than widely known languages and in the USA Spanish is by far a more known language than Italian. 

 

Everyone will have reasons to start learning a language or quit learning a language based on what their language goals are.  I know what mine are which is why I settled on Italian instead of Spanish or French.  The fact that the closest person to me speaks Italian is a real world motive to learn the language and that alone is good enough for me.  I think it's good I've studied them all because it helps me learn which one I like the best to help with my decision. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/20/2016 at 1:30 PM, Staralfur1999 said:

Ah, well, I just think being hard on ourselves comes naturally when we take on tasks like learning a language. Mainly because it's one of those things that you wish you could learn overnight, then get frustrated that it takes an almost endless amount of time (because language learning is a constant process, even when you're fluent).

 

No worries, I hope it helps :)

That's so very true, it's a constant learning process and the key is practicing it.

Yup, it does ;-)

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I gave up on trying to learn Hindi.  I was learning from a CD and a book.  I think my main problem was the method I was using to study, and then it was hard to study from the book as well.  I would get annoyed before I even sat down to study.  It meant learning a whole new alphabet, new sounds, different grammar, and it was all way too much.  Now that I'm learning Irish, I'm using a different method.  It's also easier because the alphabet they use is the one I learned with my native language.  I think if Duolingo comes out with a Hindi language learning program, I might give it a try.

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@Lingvo that's why people have to start learning languages since they're young or kids, otherwise it's going to get really hard for them to learn and such thing, for real. Time is a thing for most people nowadays.

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I gave up on learning French so fast, the way that French people talked pissed me off, it seemed like it was a language to try and be sexy with it, but it just sounds that way coming from where I come from. There are some people who can make certain words in English sound sexy, and you just automatically know when someone is trying to be sexy.

I felt that is the way I was being taught, and I wanted to be taught in a professional way, but women who speak French have the sexiest voices, so they are always making the words sound more complicated to say for me because of their accent, I guess I need to learn the pronunciations via someone who speaks English because I don't have to worry about the accents, and assume I'm not being taught the actual way to say the words. Shows where my mind is.

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Currently,  am trying to learn French by self study and self practice, many years ago, after going to French class for two months,  gave up learning French. Time  management was my main issue. I was working to make a living,thus, I could not find time for the class. I tried to learn in home, however, after a tired day,. I could not muster motivation to open my language book.

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Hey me too I have difficulties but I don't think I gave up : just sometimes during a period I am just not efficient at all but all the time I manage to be motivated again to learn !

But I have a big problem : I have difficulties to focus on precise languages ! I want to discover so many cultures and languages and so sometimes I have the feeling to be to slow ! 
 

I need also to have a precise schedule. So no I decided to continue learning : 

_ English
_ German (because honestly I start having a good basis for vocabulary)
_ Start again Chinese without pressure
_ continue to discover step by step Spanish and Italian as for a french it is quite easy to learn the basis of this language
 

And I will stop for this others ^^ until I have good results for the previous ones !

Do you have also this kind of problem ? Because sometimes it blocks you and you can have the envy to give up learning !!

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Yep. I gave up on learning both Chinese and Esperanto. Chinese was really hard and I found the lack of an alphabet to be a huge drawback for beginners. I also had some trouble to tell the tones apart when listening to native speakers, which was really frustrating.  To be fair, I didn't stop learning Chinese all of a sudden. Little by little, life just took over, and I felt no real urge to carry on with my learning process and resume my studies. Esperanto, on the other hand, was quite easy, but I suddenly came to realize that most people I was speaking Esperanto with also happen to speak English fairly well, so I felt that learning a new language to talk to people I could already speak with was a bit redundant.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Once I wanted to learn Breton, because I heard a song in Breton and I found it beautiful. But I didn't have the time and it is not spoken by many people, so I thought it would'nt make much sense.

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