why people fail in the language learning process?

It is not uncommon to see people trying to learn a new language but giving up, or struggling and reaching no progress.

The golden point.

To explain what is the most important thing in language learning process, I will show you a text written by Susanna, my friend and language partner for Hebrew/Russian/Portuguese/Romanian.

Languages and relationship

What I thought lately about languages is that I have a relationship with them. As I” have different relationships with different people in the same way I have different relationships with the languages that I know and with the languages that I’m learning. What I have discovered is that it’s more complicated than learning rules and vocabulary ad not only about having a love for the language. My first attempt to learn a language by myself was when I was in the army and I had a lot of free time after my daily serves in the medical clinic. My aunt was learning German and she left a grammar book. I decided that this is what I would do with my time; I will learn this language because I already have a nice source, this book. In all my “studying” lasted a month and then I just gave up. When I’m thinking about this now, I gave up not because it was hard or not interesting, because as we see now I’m in love with languages, its my passion, I believe I gave up because I didn’t have any relationship with this language, its sounds strange, a relationship with a language what is that? Relationship with a language is what you learn and what you feel about that language, I will explain.

My native languages are Russian and Hebrew. At home I speak Russian with my parents and even with my pets. The strange thing is, now that I live abroad wand I see a dog or a cat, naturally I will speak with it in Russian, because for me Russian is home and it is family. I love Russian, I miss it. It is like a family member that I will listen to and that I ask for help. Even if sometime it is harsh and hard, I will not be upset because I love Russian and it is waiting for me always. Even if I will not understand everything in it I know it is not going anywhere. It is like a big brother or uncle for me.

Italian was the first language that I started to learn by myself and through it discovered a whole new world of languages. For me it was my first love. Before I started to learn Italian, I didn’t know the sounds very well. When I first heard it, it was like when you notice a person and you don’t know how you feel about him and slowly, slowly you are falling in love with him. It was not love from first sight but step by step I discovered so much depth to it. Now I love it with all my heart. For me, it is the language of love and if I listen to Italian music, it touches the deepest chords of my heart.

After that I had to study Romanian because I moved to Romania. I can’t say that I’m in love with it, not at all .I know it’s advantages and disadvantages. We understand each other and we know that we need each other. It’s kind of complicated friendship. I like it, but I’m really conscious about the things that I don’t like about it. I’m still learning and discovering it and every time there is something new, something that I may like or not like. It is like choosing a friend even though there is something that you don’t like about him, Romanian is this kind of friend to me.

Hebrew is my buddy, my friend and my life. No one will understand me like Hebrew. He is funny and clever and he knows more then he seems. Hebrew is the friend that always there. He is the language that I know the best. He is my best friend.

English is the language that just came and stayed. All my life it was there and I can say that we have like business relationship. We know each other enough but we are not so close. I don’t feel I love English but sometimes it is helping me, and we our good.

Now I’m learning Portuguese, our first meeting was terrible. It was very strange for me. Although it was familiar, it was so different and this confused me even more. The language was really negative, but then something happened. When I started to listen to Portuguese more and more, it sounded like I saw it in different light. Suddenly I didn’t think it was ugly or strange anymore. Instead I saw that it was actually it is very beautiful. I’m still learning Portuguese so who knows, maybe it will became my new love language. (No offence Italian!)

This is my relationship with the languages I’m learning. I’m convinced that if we don’t have any relationship with the language, we will not be motivated to learn it. The relationship can be of any kind: love, hate, friendship and these relationships are developed through the people that we meet, the culture we are learning to understand and the countries that we are visiting.

”  ? What is your relationship with your languages

 Did you see how she loves these languages? Now, how many times we see the “Polyglots”, in meaningless competitions to prove who speaks more languages? Who is the best? It is not helpful.

These days I saw a guy asking: Can someone tells me what is the fastest way to become a Polyglot?

It is so… meaningless. You need to love the language! To love the culture. Languages are tools, the point is communication!

In other hand… I saw something that made me sad. One guy asks: Who can teach me Spanish? And a lot of people answering… What do you offer in exchange? WHAT?

I teach Portuguese to Wouter because I like him, because he is my friend, I never asked for Dutch lessons.

Susanna teaches me Hebrew without  concerning about what I can offer!

I have been learning Russian thanks to my friend Olga, and she never look at me as a guy who must offer something in exchange!

Haya, my friend from Jordan, teaches me Arabic without asking me for nothing!

I am learning some Polish from Anna, the same thing, I teach her nothing. She helped me to write this one. 

I still have Emilia  teaching me Finnish. Loretta teaching me Mandarin, and a lot of another priceless friends.

Do you really want to learn a language? Change your point of view. People are not tools to learn a language. 

Languages are tools to connect you with people. Forget the exchange and simply make friends!