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In this episode I talk about reasons why we stop learning learning langauges. Why we give up on them and quit. This is based on a poll I posted on the Omniglot Fan Club on Facebook.
Top reasons for giving up on a language include losing interest, not having enough time, getting distracted, another language seemed more interesting, and it being too hard.
Tunes features in this episode
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch
See the score for this tune.
Lifting the Lid / Codi’r Caead – a tune I wrote on the cavaquinho in 2020.
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Simon, one reason you didn’t mention for not learning a new language is not needing to. As a U.S. resident, I am in a country with 330 million people, where the vast majority of speakers are capable of speaking English, and pretty much no one that speaks a non-English language could expect (much less demand) that others accommodate them. Yes, accommodation happens at times, but it is the exception, not the rule. In contrast, Europe has a dazzling diversity of languages, making the learning of new ones more valuable and more necessary. For us here, I wish there were greater emphasis on language learning, but there just isn’t. I could almost my entire life without hearing “foreign” languages or ever needing to know them. For people living in Europe, that must sound awful, but that is our reality.