Marais wrote:How long have you been studying French for?
Another question I really dislike. What am I supposed to answer? I started at the age of 9 but I haven't been studying and progressing for 17 years. I was forced to restart several times, I had several long breaks, I was "learning" with significantly worse groups and therefore demotivated to study. So, what am I supposed to answer? the 17 years? Or the approximately 11 years left after leaving out the complete breaks? Or just the 7 years during which I was actually progresing? Or 10 years of classes? (The last too don't overlap that much). And I am not even sure these counts are correct, my path was quite a chaos.
It sucks to answer that. Either people hear the "17 years" and immediately find themselves another excuse and disregard my efforts and struggle, like I've already seen it even on this forum ("Oh, of course you speak French as you have had classes for 10 years, how dare you talk badly about teachers!"). Or they count just the time in class, leaving out the fact most classes were useless as either the teachers sucked or the group was a few levels bellow me. Somehow, the most important part, my self study at the beginning and at the end, gets the least attention.
Language learning is not just a function of time. After all, most forum members have been taking breaks from their languages, do you count the breaks in? And two years of 3 hours per week are something totally different than two years of 3 hours per day.
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I totally agree with emk, I'd love to here the truth "I don't want to" sometimes, as there is nothign to feel ashamed of.
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Like iguanamnon, I usually don't bring up languages on my own. But there are the situations that leave me no choice. I'd love my family, friends, boyfriends, boyfriend's families to stop bringing this up with strangers. "She speaks 4 languages!" or "She speaks 6 languages!" which is not true, I am not at that level in all my languages and don't claim to have the level
And "Say something in French/Spanish!". What am I supposed to say?