Change of Heart?

Have any of you ever started to study a lanuage that you were initially very interested in, but actually lost interest after becoming more familiar with the language/culture? For any linguistic/cultural reasons such as difficulty, the sound, attitude, manner, mentality.

I'm asking because I recently found myself in this position, and intead of continuing to seriously study, I find that I have to "convince" myself to keep doing so. I won't say what language because I don't want to distract from the main question. Thanks.

It happened to me when learning English. I loved everything American and wanted to leave my country to study in America and experiencing the American Dream. Well, after some months I was glad to be back on the plane.If English weren't so ingrained in my brain I would be happy not ever to speak it again.

You write it so well, though!

Just curios Guest, what country are you from and what didn't you like about the US? Was the culture/language just too different? Were you home-sick?

Free Hawaii!

I don't know why, but your topic sounds Chinese to me (變心). Yes, I do. I haven't been learning English actively in the past 2 years. It must be an entirely different language from the rest of my future collection, and it's become so tasteless that I'm not much motivated to expand my knowledge. I don't have the read a grammar book of my native language and I can write in my language without mistakes, while I find English prepositions to be entirely irritating (a reason for the design of Esperanto prepositions).

It may be a result of the human nature. We may somewhat need some huge motivators to get us going. I'm certainly heavily biased when commenting on all the 3 languages I can speak, but anyway my comment on Mandarin is: well, I find it a really hard language to learn when you don't have a single cognate or similar word to rely on. It's so remote from your country, even though overseas Chinese when united form a population of an average big European country. What's the point of learning it? Now, I then think that (stereotyping): I think Chinese girls should all look rather pretty for some straight guys who like foreign girls. If I were one of them, and if I could sleep with a Chinese girl after, through and while learning Mandarin and TO become fluent, I'd be really crazy about this "wicked" good language.

This is just one example. I'd just try to find meaningful contexts (like this example). I don't force myself to translate from my L4 (namely German) to my L5 or L6, when I have any, or simply back to my L1/2/3. All I want is to read something very interesting in LX which wouldn't be available in any others. I don't just mean novels or news reports. It could be a favourite subject, a favourite dish, a favourite place, a favourite girl...

French... After three years of French and two trips to France... Apologies to French people on the forum...

I was also interested in French but i lost all the motivation required to learn it. I arrived to the conclusion that learning French was a futile effort and I'd better spend my time in mastering my English.

<< French... After three years of French and two trips to France... >>

Why? Did you get frustrated or something?

<< I was also interested in French but i lost all the motivation required to learn it. >>

Was that because you found English to be more useful/practical? Or was it anything else?

<< I arrived to the conclusion that learning French was a futile effort and I'd better spend my time in mastering my English. >>

That is similar to my situation. This idea contributed to my loss of interest/motivation in the second foriegn language I am (now only casually) studying. Basically the idea is that instead of seriously studying a 2nd foreign language, I should focus on improving my first foreign language, which I haven't yet mastered and is more useful to me.

What's are your native languages Guest and Skippy?

I got tired of learning Japanese because I realised one day it would be impossible ever to speak it properly (or more precisely, read and write it), besides Japan is a long way away and the population is quite homogeneous and intimidating. I studied it for 6 years at school and wanted to go on at university but changed my mind, thankfully.

I was studying French too for the first year at university but then I got sick of it not due so much to the language or anything but just a change of my own interests.

Now I am monolingual and proud of it.

Monolingual pride parade, that's what we need.

There must be many reasons, but the main thing is still that, tautologically, you fail to find something that keeps you going. It could be a nice language course or a part of culture or a person you like.

I'm afraid that this happens very often among many people, and especially young people, since I think most learners should be pretty young before they practically become too busy.

I don't know how Skippy has learnt French for 3 years, but AFAIK, learning French for 3 years in Hong Kong is roughly like: Option 1) You learn at AF, pay a huge amount of money, say some 15 USD per lesson (and you can tell how much it is for a season), for very "relaxing" lessons amounting to just 100 hours or so in 2 seasons. Or 3 hours in a row every week? If the learner doesn't even have the idea of getting independent - I mean, in relation to your own age (well into early adulthood like me) and in terms of how much you know about language acquisition as an average Joe - then while 1000 hours of lessons would probably do, that costs an awful lot of money and time.

Option 2) Learn it at university. First, you must be in the right university (just like some high schools in US; not every one offers language X). Second, it must be popular enough or else no one teaches it. Third, you must settle for the right schedule, the right teacher(s), the right course settings...........And guys, you and I have a different life, but I know what you do at university. Do you socialize a lot? Do you read a lot of books for your major? Do you do jobs? Do you date? When everyone has a life, I find it, well, while a course is still better than none, it IS just so.

In my city, most students only study for 3 years, and 3 years are just 6 semesters. At least for me, it's stupid to learn a grammar in SIX semesters. Grammar is just a book, but in your mental framework, it should be interlaced heavily with vocab you know. So, on one hand, you can't take the abstraction (grammar) from the reality (context) and think the former is real; on the other, even worse, I think it isn't economical at all to learn the abstraction in 6 semesters before I try to make the sense out of the reality. Life is short, and very often in the 6th semester people are already seeking jobs, BUT guess what, the many vocabulary gaps that 6-semester lessons would leave would simply make that abstract knowledge not work. In short, you would be nowhere near passable fluency to do anything - even if you don't write and speak, like just to read a novel or... a dinner menu.

I still haven't taken into account people who immediately think (I mean, Chinese) 'French verbs and words are terribly difficult to decode' even at the first glance. There must be 3) 4) 5), too, but I think it's useless to talk about them. People say 'go to France to learn'. Again, antimoon's learning guides show clearly how it may or may not work. This is gibberish because, if I can stay in France tomorrow (and even forever), why should I bother to 'learn' French at all? If I already have the money, I wouldn't be asking a stupid question expecting stupid answers. If I say N) motivation is the single way of getting myself going, that is gibberish, either - I sort of need the many lines above to show my POV. I used to post quite like this in forums in my native language, but I simply saw the stupidity of some grown-ups as a little prince. Yeah, so I think this forum is good.

<< I got tired of learning Japanese because I realised one day it would be impossible ever to speak it properly (or more precisely, read and write it), besides Japan is a long way away and the population is quite homogeneous and intimidating. I studied it for 6 years at school and wanted to go on at university but changed my mind, thankfully. >>

Hmmm. To be honest, this was the language I was talking about in my first post. I have studied for about a year and also feel that it can be very difficult to speak it "properly", and I'm not a fan of the character system either, although I do appreciate it. However, some friends of mine can speak and read fairly well, but they are much more dedicated as they plan to continue living in or working with Japan, but I don't, hence my decline of motivation. I can speak ok at a basic level, but I honestly don't enjoy it so much, and that is a big problem. This is in contrast to my first foreign language, which I really do enjoy speaking.

The funny thing is that I've been living in Japan for over a year now teaching English, but I will return home this summer. Yes, it is very homogeneous, which is one reason why I feel like I could never fit in or get comfortable here. As far as the language goes, the casual speech is ok but the polite and honorific forms do not appeal to me at all. It feels too rigid and indirect and quite repetitious at times. I prefer more easy-going and direct speech like Euro languages. Everyone is very polite, but so much so that it can be hard to know what a person is really thinking meaning to say. Last, I feel like I have trouble truely expressing myself in Japanese. Mostly because it seems like so few words are used to express feelings or emotions. Even some casual expressions that I know, I actually don't like to use because of the ambiguity of them.

Actually, I have focused more on touching up on my first foreign language or even another new one that will be of more use to me when I return home. I may keep studying Japanese casually, but honestly, I have lost much desire study it very seriously. Thank for listening to my gripe.

>>However, some friends of mine can speak and read fairly well, but they are much more dedicated as they plan to continue living in or working with Japan, but I don't, hence my decline of motivation.

I don't enjoy learning English, too, but my only source of motivation now is that I need to use it study almost everything including foreign languages. But back in the last few years, just like Anglophones who get frustrated by their very first foreign language, like owing to poor learning settings... like many others, I simply didn't see the hope of getting in any way fluent or learning anything worthwhile of English. This affection filter is enough to end the dreams of mastering English, not to mention any further languages, of many. This is what I may call an "emotional" critical period.

My country is also very homogeneous, but my language is pretty direct...:)
I think I at least have some feelings for individual languages. My English is just so-so, but this is the one in which I sound most direct. In fact, I have to admit that even my native language is not as direct, but Mandarin does give me a true sense of being a native (even though this isn't my first language), and I feel MUCH more confident in this second language. I'm actually very shy in my first, to an extent that I don't like being so native in it. It seems like my first is even more 'conservative' than my second, when I know also that many of my people are so MUCH more cultured and open to ideas (ranging from sex, sciences, religions, international politics... but probably not local politics), while many in my city (this is a very small sample) simply DON'T think and DON'T read, and when I can see loads of foreigners interacting with people in bigger cities in the rest of China.

So, here is my ad: if I were to choose between my (fairly) native languages as a foreign learner, I'd definitely settle on Mandarin first. Mandarin may sound like Chinese French, but very masculine. (Some digression): after having learnt a lot of foreign languages, there have been huge changes in my mindset, particularly because I'm more aware of cultural differences. For many complicated reasons, my first language is rather gender-biased in my POV (I'm afraid it could be like Japanese for you). My country on the whole might actually be like that, but at least many historical and social factors have made Mandarin, the language of 1.3 billion, more vigorous.