Have you ever given up on learning a language?

[melisapink]

Has anyone given up on learning a language? What reason was it for? Did you go back to it?

I want to start learning a new language but I'm worried that I don't have the patience.

[Baburra]

I have, with French, just because the pronunciations are a little too far off from my native tongue (Asian), and I have heard that most French people are easily annoyed with deviating accents, pronunciations, etc. which just raises my standard way higher. I technically haven't really given up on it completely, though, and I still hope to learn it someday when or if I am able to live there for a while and finally have an excuse and more of a reason to really immerse myself into the language and culture.

[Guest isabbbela]

I gave up learning German, but that was because the teacher was a scumbag. He was a liar, had a sick weird humor and didn't really speak all that much German.... I would love to start having German classes again, cause despite being hard I liked it. But this time with a decent teacher!

[Trellum]

I'm ashamed to admit I've done that plenty of times, this isn't so odd tho, since I've been interested in learning new languages since I was 16.  At first I had a lot plans, and I wanted to learn as many languages as posible, sadly I fell short.  I only managed to speak english and spanish fluently.  So yeah, I gave up on learning a lot languages!  One of them is Finnish and Norwegian.  I actually wanted to learn swedish and icelandic as well    I never really tried learning finnish tho, I even bought a book, but my attention was always on Norwegian mostly.  That's history now; water under the bridge.

[leahcim132]

Yes. I hated learning French and I just wanted to give up. I just hated it and wanted to quit... but I continued and I am pretty good at it now .

[linguaholic]

I studied Japanese at university for half a year. I dropped it after that for several reasons. However, I am pretty sure I am going to learn that language at a later stage. It makes me so sad to think about all the time I invested in that language and then I just dropped it and forgot almost everything about it. I guess the most important thing about learning a language is having some goal. I did not have that at this time and therefore I did not have the necessary motivation to keep on going

[xlzqwerty1]

For me, I wouldn't say dropped. It's so much as more of a "learn later, take break now" kind of thing, haha. I've dropped French for now, now that it's not a compulsory course in high school here in Canada, but I kind of wish I didn't drop it. It could have been very useful for me if I ever wanted to travel to Quebec again or to France. I've forgotten a lot of vocabulary since then and I kind of regret it

[Czarownica]

I give up on a lot of things - I'm impatient and easily discouraged. That being said, I'm also naive and I hope that I'll go back to those languages again some day. The only language I'm pretty sure I gave up for good is French - pronunciation is too hard and I'm bored with European languages at the moment; and if I want to go back to European languages, I still have German and Italian to learn...

[deyvion]

I have, yes. French. However, I do not know if you can really say I gave it up, since I did not really want to learn it to begin with. I could only choose German or French in school. I wanted Spanish, but there was no teacher (they even asked my mother to come in and teach it). So, French it was. I do not really have any interest in French, so I will probably not go back to learning it.

[pandandesign]

I have learned Japanese when I was in high school. I dropped out the class after 5 months because I had a hard time learning the language. I didn't do well on the quizzes and exams. I have given up learning Japanese because I lost interest. There was no reason for me to continue to learn Japanese anymore. It was one of the most difficult languages I have ever learned.

[writeletters]

I have given up. I started French before I got to high school, then found out they didn't offer it until you were a few years in. I kept going for a year, and then it slowly died away because of too much other work. I may one day decide to go back to it, however.

[calebmelvern]

Back in college, I took up Basic Spanish. At first, my friends and I already agreed that after this course, we would take up advanced classes. However, we didn't enjoy the classes as much as we expected to. This led to us not pursuing learning Spanish. I'm still interested though, but as of now I'm focusing on learning Japanese.

[Bonyi]

No I have never given up on any language that I put my mind to learn. Once I set my mind on it, there is no going back. I suggest that anyone who wants to learn a language should have this mindset and anything whether language or not will be a work over.

[kitkat0124]

I used to learn spanish before, but I gave up. At that time I was still busy with my school. I can't find time to do it. Another reason is I have no one to talk to, I can't even use what I'm learning.

[pandandesign]

I did, which was Japanese. I gave up learning Japanese when I was in high school because it was too difficult for me to learn. I didn't do very good on the quizzes and exams because I wasn't into learning Japanese. The only reason I learned the language was that I was required to learn a second language in order to graduate from high school. I have already known Chinese, which it counted as a second language.

[Guest akasha24]

As many people have mentioned before me, French was definitely a language I stopped learning right after high school. I graduated in French as well. It was too hard for me and kind of annoying at times. I also lost interest in it quickly because I didn't really like the sound of it. I couldn't wait to stop learning French after graduation because it felt like a big weight on my shoulders.

[SpiralArchitect]

Got really excited about learning Japanese because I love anime and manga, then simply gave up because there just aren't enough good japanese teachers where I live.

[Qamra]

I gave up with Swedish because I didn't have time. And then, when I wanted to start learning again, I just wasn't into it anymore. I would like to learn some Northern language but I'm still not sure which one to pick.

[Falkner]

I started learning Japanese as a flight of fancy a few years ago and thought that I would go the distance. But ultimately I found that I don't really care enough about the language to devote the enormous amount of time and effort required to learn it, so I gave up on it. I think it was the right choice.

[diprod]

I tried learning Mandarin but it just was so hard that I kind of set it aside for a while. I plan to get back to it but probably not anytime soon. It was so frustrating.

[Bonyi]

As a person, i don't give up on anything i set my mind to do. You know this is a winning attitude not only for learning a language but for everything in life. This has helped me achieve so much. Yes, just having this mind set.

[Katya S]

I've given up on learning a few languages. Sometimes it's because I've been unable to continue with it, but other times it's just been because I've gotten distracted.

This happened with French. Last year, my friend and I started to learn French online and we weren't doing too badly, but then we just stopped. I'm not sure why exactly - I suppose we just got too busy and thought of other things that needed to be done. Sometime I'd like to start learning French again, but I'll leave it until I give up some other things probably.

The good thing about learning a language at school is that you can't just give up, so it really motivates you to continue. That's why I think I'll do much better at learning Japanese than I did at French, Russian, Spanish, or any of the other languages that I've tried to start learning

[add7]

Yes, on German so many times. Most of the times it was because of the teachers that just sucked all the fun out of learning the language. It's hard to stay motivated when the teacher doesn't do much in class at all. So when I saw that this was leading nowhere, I just decided that I would start learning on my own. And it worked out for me, because I got the grip for the basics of the language much better and faster than I could ever before. Now I'm pretty confident in my speaking ability, though my writing does need some improvement.