{"id":3949,"date":"2015-06-11T16:45:36","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T15:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=3949"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:17:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:17:00","slug":"5-reasons-not-to-learn-a-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/5-reasons-not-to-learn-a-language","title":{"rendered":"5 reasons NOT to learn a language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, you did read that correctly. We&#8217;re always telling you why learning a language is one of the best things you can do &#8211; so today, we&#8217;re examining a few of the main reasons why people choose not to do it. How many of these do you recognise?<\/p>\n<h3>1. I&#8217;m not good at languages<\/h3>\n<p>We&#8217;ve all said this at some point. What it really means is &#8216;I didn&#8217;t do well at languages at school, so I must be bad at them.&#8217; (Remember that time in Spanish class when you accidentally said you were pregnant when you meant embarrassed, and everyone laughed? Nightmare.)<\/p>\n<p>But we all learn differently and at school, we were only taught one way. So maybe it&#8217;s just that you haven&#8217;t found the right way for you yet&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/study2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3974\" style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" src=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/study2-1024x335.jpg\" alt=\"Everyone's good at languages\" width=\"650\" height=\"213\" data-wp-pid=\"3974\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>2. I can&#8217;t afford it<\/h3>\n<p>Learning a language doesn&#8217;t need to cost a fortune. You could read newspapers online in the language you&#8217;re learning. Or find a friend to chat to, either in person or via Skype. If you&#8217;re a creative type, make yourself some flashcards and use them to practise your vocabulary.<\/p>\n<p>For more tips, visit Alex&#8217;s article on <a href=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/02\/how-to-learn-a-language-on-a-budget\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">learning a language on a budget<\/a>. And check out our special offer at the end of this email&#8230;<\/p>\n<h3>3. I don&#8217;t need to learn a language<\/h3>\n<p>This is one that&#8217;s often heard among English speakers: &#8216;But everyone speaks English!&#8217; (Apparently 33% of Brits think <a href=\"https:\/\/visual.ly\/secrets-brits-abroad\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">speaking English with a foreign accent<\/a> is the answer. It really isn&#8217;t.)<\/p>\n<p>And while it might be true that a lot of people now speak English, that doesn&#8217;t mean we should stop making the effort. By knowing just a few words like hello and thank you, we show respect and probably end up having a better experience as a result.<\/p>\n<h3>4. I haven&#8217;t got time<\/h3>\n<p>We all lead busy lives, and it can be hard to find time to do everything we want to do. But learning a language doesn&#8217;t have to mean studying for hours on end. Break it up into small, manageable tasks and fit it around your daily life &#8211; on the bus to work, for instance, or waiting for a meeting to start. You may be surprised how much time you actually have.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/time2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3977\" style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" src=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/time2-1024x335.jpg\" alt=\"Finding time to learn a language\" width=\"650\" height=\"213\" data-wp-pid=\"3977\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more advice, check out our blog post on <a href=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/09\/how-do-you-make-time-to-learn-a-language\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">making time to learn a language<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>5. I&#8217;m too old to learn a language<\/h3>\n<p>You&#8217;re never too old. It may be true that children&#8217;s brains are better suited to picking up new languages, but it doesn&#8217;t necessarily follow that adults can&#8217;t do it. Just look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fluentin3months.com\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Benny Lewis<\/a>, who hated languages at school and now speaks seven fluently. If he can do it, why not the rest of us?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So let&#8217;s stop making excuses and start <a href=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">learning a language<\/a> now; in a year&#8217;s time we&#8217;ll be glad we did&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, you did read that correctly. We&#8217;re always telling you why learning a language is one of the best things&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,794],"tags":[3985],"class_list":["post-3949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelearning","category-utalk","tag-general"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":3949},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"Language Learning"},{"value":794,"label":"uTalk"}],"post_tag":[{"value":3985,"label":"General"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Language Learning","slug":"languagelearning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":254,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":254,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Language Learning","category_nicename":"languagelearning","category_parent":0},{"term_id":794,"name":"uTalk","slug":"utalk","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":794,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":78,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":794,"category_count":78,"category_description":"","cat_name":"uTalk","category_nicename":"utalk","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":3985,"name":"General","slug":"general","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3985,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":135,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10463,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions\/10463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}