Why is it so hard to learn a language?
If you are a proud polyglot, you’ve either never asked this question, or you’ve already figured out the answer. You probably know it’s not easy to learn a new language through your own experiences. Maybe you’ve taken 3 or 4 years of high school Spanish, yet you couldn’t get through
Why is it so hard to get the language to stick?
When you take a language, it’s usually just for a few years in high school. While you are taking it, you threat it just like any other subject like math, history, and English. So why don’t you know very much Spanish, but addition, subtraction, and many other math topics are a breeze?
You’ve probably had over 10 years of math, but only a few with Spanish. There’s a lot to learn with math and it takes many years of practice to get it down. The same goes with a language. There is a lot to learn. Cramming it into three years is not going to work unless you spend hours each day studying.
It’s not that it’s hard to learn a language, it’s just that we often underestimate how much time and effort it really takes. If you started taking Spanish in first grade and every year after that, by the time you graduated from high school, there’s no doubt you’d be fluent.
There is a lot to learn in any language. There are thousands of words and many rules on how to put them together. It takes a lot of work to be able to put them together seamlessly, without a thought.
Learning a language is only as hard as you make it. If it’s too hard, slow down or find another way to learn.