Languages You Lost Interest In

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Xenops
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Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby Xenops » Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:04 pm

The title is probably grammatically incorrect for English grammar purists. :) Oh well.

Inspired by LesRonces' thread, are there languages you once had an interest in, but lost it? It could be a casual interest, like "maybe I'll do a Pimsleur lesson or two" to getting a B1 level, and finding you lost interest?

For a casual interest, I contemplated Mandarin. I visited mainland China recently, and without getting political, I found the country oppressive. So I lost interest in the Chinese culture in general.

With Spanish, I did well in high school classes (we actually had good instructors), but the interest waned with a boring teacher in college, and it never recovered, or maybe it never was strong to begin with.

And you? ;)
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby tomgosse » Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:18 pm

For me it was Spanish and German. French was and still is my first love.
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby aaleks » Sat Jun 24, 2017 7:59 pm

I haven't really lost an interest in these languages, I just don't have a time and probably a very strong interest in them right now.
The first is of course German which I was studying in school for 7 years. Even though I've used to think that it was a waste of time and the lessons were boring, some things, at least about grammar, I certainly learnt back there. Then, for 1 or 2 years, I studied it by myself. I couldn't say what my level of German was when I dropped the language (maybe A2-B1).
Also I've tried to learn French and Spanish. My introduction to French happened when I was a kid, somewhere around the time I started to study German in school. There was a kid's TV-show at the time which included language lessons: English, German and French. The French lessons were my favorite then (I guess English was my weakest one among those three back then :roll: )
I guess my intention to learn Spanish was a "side-effect" of watching plenty Spanish-speaking (Mexican, Argentinean, Venezuelan and probably other countries) series in the 90s. In dubbed movies/series in Russia you usually can hear both tracks: Russian and original one. Maybe it's called not a dubbing, but I don't know the term. I've had a "bad" habit to listen to original track too. It isn't the same as watch something with subtitles, the part of original track you are able to hear is very limited. Nevertheless I managed to learn some words that way (English and French too). Not on purpose, it just happened. And then I decided to try to learn the language for real and even bought a textbook but... I don't even know where that textbook is right now :|
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby blaurebell » Sat Jun 24, 2017 8:02 pm

Italian. My dad lived in Italy for like 8 months when I was 14 and I went to visit him. Totally fell in love with the country and the language. In high school I made a miserable attempt at learning it, but failed. At uni I then took it as my language option and the combination of no time for studying, grammar translation method and a dragon like teacher who insisted on attendance totally killed all interest. I passed my exam and then never did anything with the language again. I also completely failed to integrate the language into my life because I simply couldn't find anything to watch. The only reason why I chose Italian in the first place was that I wanted to do a semester abroad there. Dragon teacher refused to let me on the course that I needed to be allowed to take the exam for the language requirement :roll: That said, I'm pretty sure I will re-activate it at some point, because I still want to do an art history road trip through Italy!
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby gsbod » Sat Jun 24, 2017 10:01 pm

Japanese. In theory, I still find it rather interesting, but I am no longer interested in spending time on it, even to maintain it. It was simply too challenging to find practical uses for the language in daily life. I can't afford regular trips to Japan. Native speaker acquaintances moved back to Japan and we stopped regular contact. The time difference makes even Skype contact difficult to schedule. Lack of opportunities to communicate left me with a distinct lack of confidence - I never really found my own voice in the language. Legal and affordable access to films and TV is mostly limited to niche art house films and stuff oriented to teenage boys. I couldn't even get reliable access to the radio, lots of geoblocking, and in any case the time difference is a problem here too. I had no way of picking up Japanese newspapers. Books were the only things not problematic to access (paper books, that is), however given the hours required to learn how to read Japanese well (a real challenge compared to other languages) I eventually decided it wasn't worth the time. This is all after studying and passing JLPT N2 (similar to a B2 exam on listening and reading, but without speaking and writing components).

For a long time Japanese felt like unfinished business, but as my German has improved in leaps and bounds I have been able to integrate it into and enrich my life in ways I never would have dreamed possible with Japanese. Therefore I have no regrets any more.
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby schlaraffenland » Sat Jun 24, 2017 11:45 pm

:? I have abandoned course materials lying around here for Basque, Turkish, Korean, and Coptic. I wouldn't necessarily say that I will never again take any of these up, but right now, my interest is too latent to sustain a diligent course of study.

I left school with around B2 in Spanish and haven't touched it since. No aversion, but just something I take for granted, perhaps, and don't feel compelled to improve in any meaningful way.
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby aravinda » Sun Jun 25, 2017 1:24 am

The only languages I have ever lost interest in are programming languages :lol: . I was never interested in languages specifically made up for movies, fiction etc so there is no question of losing the interest.
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Jun 25, 2017 2:17 am

tomgosse wrote:For me it was Spanish and German. French was and still is my first love.


Similar to me. French is not necessarily my first love (German was), but it is my one true love! Spanish and German will be revisited one day, but there's jut no time currently, and Dutch is what I'm aiming for next.
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby aokoye » Sun Jun 25, 2017 5:52 am

Spanish is the main one. It's such a shame because it's pretty easy for me to learn and it was the first language where I really learned what I need to do in order to learn a language. There are also countless resources. That said, I get bored with it very easily.

Japanese is neither here nor there. I like it in theory, but I am pretty utilitarian in terms of the languages I end up choosing to spend lots of time on. I either need to be planning on going to a country where that language is widely spoken or it needs to be a Germanic language (for the purposes of ease but I can't think of any country where a Germanic language is widely spoken that I wouldn't want to go to). As much as Japan is fascinating, I know I would likely never end up spending more than a week there and I honestly can't imagine having the money and time to go to Japan. That said I will probably always be trying to dip my toe into Japanese because it, unlike Spanish, is fun for me.
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Re: Languages You Lost Interest In

Postby schlaraffenland » Sun Jun 25, 2017 7:58 am

Morgana wrote:German. I got spooked by the cases. :oops: I was too used to studying easier (to me) languages at the time so it just put me off. I might return to it one day, though.


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