Language Learning Trauma
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- In this video I discuss what to do when you go through a traumatic experience that makes you want to quit learning your target language.
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Hello, I’m an Irish-Nigerian-American language learning RUclipsr hailing from New York!
I currently speak seven languages. Six of which I taught myself from scratch. By 2023, I aim to learn another five. The languages I currently speak are English, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, French, Chinese and Spanish.
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In this video I discuss what to do when you go through a traumatic experience that makes you want to quit learning your target language.
If you have any similar experiences you'd like to share, be sure to share them in the comments. We support each other on this channel.
Ikenna someone in the last video saying that when are you gonna play *VRChat Again?*
REALLY helpful, keep up the good work!
Ben je ooit in Vlaanderen geweest?
Good videos
Salut ikenna, tu peux me dire dans quel hôpital tu as eu cet incident? j'habite en Belgique et j'ai pas envie de m'y retrouver x)
Moral at 8:05
"If you have some bad memories about something, don't be scared and build brand new memories to erase the bad ones."
Ikenna - 2021
43532
@@yesnope5986 This is exactly the number of likes I'll get in 500 years
@@tristaaaaan yeah my ass was promoting a language learning discord server but i realised all of them got deleted xD, it was a good server with people can teach diffrent languages lol
i think i typed it by accident
Nah, don’t forget the bad memories
Use them as motivation
I'm so mad about the sheet changes. As nurses, some of the 1st & most basic training we learn is how to change sheets with an immobile patient remaining in the bed. It only takes some careful rolling of the patient from side to side by the nurses; & doesn't take long. There's no excuse for them treating you with such disrespect! 😡
I thought so too and I'm not even a nurse. Horrific
France has a bad reputation for being mean to foreigners/tourists, maybe Belgium or parts of Belgium are the same; at least from what I hear from acquaintances of mine that have been there. Hopefully it was just the area they were in, still inexcusable but I’m sure not every place in France is bad.
I’m sure there are many places that are very kind to non-natives.
I agree, it’s disgusting, Hospitals are meant to care for their patients.
There is an excuse/reason : Belgian healthcare is grossly underfunded because of austerity policies and the medical professionals, especially the nurses, are overworked.
@ Thanks for the explanation. After simmering down, I'd wondered if I'd reacted from a place of privilege. At least he had clean bedding. It's much harder to move a patient to & from the floor, than to bed change as I described. It was probably tiring for them too.
Just glad he's safely home.
I was dating a girl for nearly two years. I started learning french and had been doing so for like 5 or 6 months and really loved it, and then found out she was sneaking around with some guy. In one of the last conversations I had with her, she mentioned how the guy could speak french fluently and that made me dislike the thought of french for some reason. Its been nearly two years since that happened and I just recently started to consider learning french again
Damn. Were you originally learning French for her? Or were you learning French and then you met her?
Don't let her taint your love for the language. Or taint any of your memories. You deserve much more! (But I'm sure you know that :D)
bonne chance !
Lol if someone said hello to me in my native language i will be like “oH my gOd yoU’re sO flUent”
never let a woman tells you negative things and accept it. They are mean sometimes, I hope you found a sweet girl to talk to in French ;) Continue tes efforts pour cette magnifique langue pour toi et pas pour les autres!
Language learning includes tears. Sometimes lots of them.
And he learn about 10. Th-thats impressive.
I literally cried learning numbers 90-150 in mandarin when I was 4 and i had to memorize those for an hour aND MY TUTOR KEPT ON SCOLDING ME SO I CRIIIIIIEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDD
Last week i got so frustrated because of French grammar and i almost started crying cuz i did 10 points of 50. Then i calmed down and started to focus and got 40 of 50 Points 😀
@@z.7961 I had the same experience with a French tutor when I was 13/14. I kept getting the conjugations wrong for something and when I cried she said "crying is for kindergartners". And she made me cry on another occasion too. I was able to good at French but I really hated those tutoring sessions.
Nowadays I don't think any tutor can get away with making a kid cry though lol. Those were hard times
This is so true. I learned German when I was small without knowing just from watching TV. When I went to school my German teacher looked at me as a 7 years old wonder child 😂 Nobody in my family did speak German, so nobody was aware I mix this with Polish, which is my native language. It was the first time at school I have understand that I speak two languages and that German is not mine native one, but I speak and understand it like a native. So because of this everyone has chase me to study German, to work in Germany, to do everything in German.... This pressure made me dislike German so much at some point, that I refused to use it. I started learning other languages and now don't use German nearly at all. However must admit that I did go to Germany on student exchange and met great people there, and this made it a bit better for me. Thanks for sharing your experience. I think this video will make me rethink the way I look at my German language skills in a more positive way.
@@osobaanonimowa to be honest I had an amazing teacher at that time, and she was really cool. Thanks to her I figured out that I speak a second language, where on the other hand my family was sometimes wondering why I 'making up' this funny words (turns out it was German words) as I was using them randomly in a sentence. It was more my surrounding like other non language teachers, directors, friends, parents of friends etc. I know they didn't mean it in a negative way, but it was overwhelming. I think the only person who has not push me to hard was my German teacher herself. She did support me as much as she could and was very dedicated. She also encouraged me to travel abroad and explore the world (not only Germany) and follow my passions, so really good memories here. Sorry to hear you had bad experience with your teacher, but good you found something to reverse this process. Hope you enjoy Poland ❤️
O hejka, widzę nie tylko ja go ogladam :D
@@antagonistkaxue 😏😎👍
@@osobaanonimowa If I had the same English teacher I have now in my last year of High School (gymnázium) when I was growing up and lived under different circumstances, I would have absolutely hated that language. She is one of the oldest teachers teaching the language for a long time already and makes the most amount of mistakes out of any English teacher I have ever met.
Some of my favourite "gems" I have collected over the last 2 years: Let's not to waste time; Do you want to share your ideas about your last weekend?; It is made of wooden and quiet nice; Where did you was listening to concert.. and I could go on for a long time.
True lmao my English teacher just straight up bullying me because I had better english than her(im from indonesia which speaking proper english was surprisingly rare) I usually blend in with a random english community without realizing so ye she got rekt by 13 yrs old me
Lord, that hospital experience was nightmarish. Luckily you got pulled out of there. I can easily see why it could put you off the French language for a long time.
It's like everthing, not everything is good but also not everything is bad. He didn't have luck with this hospital and those horrible people.
so this is kind of heavy but I'm no longer in this situation so I'm able to share it. I'm german and so is my mum, and until about the age of 6/7, my German and English were equally as good as each other. Then my mum developed a really bad alcohol addiction, to the point where she could no longer take care of me, it was down to my step-dad, who doesn't speak a word of german. My mum didn't recover until I was about 11, and for a few years I started to get back on track with my german again, it wasn't anywhere near the same level, but I was happy trying. Then at 16, my mum fell back into a bad place again, which is inconveniently when I was starting to take German at GCSE and A-level; we had a terrible relationship, and every time I tried to study german I would link it back to her and all of the terrible things she did and said when she was drinking alcohol constantly and tunneling our family into debt. I barely passed A-level German, and it was so distressing to me to know that I could've done better, but she was my only real link to Germany and so I couldn't separate the language from her in my head. I dreaded the lessons and the homework and had no passion at all for it. Thankfully now she's gotten past her addiction and is in a very healthy place now, but it has left me with a lot of lingering frustration; I feel like I should be way better than I am.
my mom was an alcoholic to im glad to hear your mom got over it my wasn't able to its difficult to go through something like that when your caregiver is doing something self destructive and can't take care of you
Homework can wait, there are priorities.
Omg frrrr
Exactly
watching Ikenna is the homework
I feel you, I have maths to Finnish but..........
Same here
Hospital trauma is the worst - I hate hospitals to this day because of a really similar experience with a spontaneous spinal CSF leak where I couldn't stand at all. Lots of CSF leak patients get misdiagnosed with POTS and aren't taken seriously. I'm so sorry you had that experience! Thanks for sharing
Whenever Ikenna posts and you get the notification, you gotta stop everything you're doing and watch the video.
Wow I really relate to language trauma. At the beginning of the pandemic my partner and I went to stay with her friend's parents in Paris, who were shockingly judgemental, impatient, and unforgiving with my attempts to speak French. The bullying was so bad I just ended up isolating myself for four months - it really destroyed my confidence and self-esteem and, yes, my excitement for learning French. Such a shame - I really don't get why people are such arseholes to each other.
Some of my must traumatic experiences living abroad have been related to hospitals.
Even when it's not medically related the one thing that seems to be in common are people who can't be bothered, people who REFUSE to listen or ignore you.
To this day I struggle to formally study this language. The language isn't the issue but the negative experiences I associate with it are.
I would personally try and change my mindset into "I've had a bad experience with people, not a language" because in the end there's so many nice people speaking the language too... but its hard and it definitely takes a little time
That's very true
thats the thing. Learning a lanugauge is also immersing into the culture, its hard for people to not have this mindset because it feels like a cultural shock.
i hope you're doing better from your sickness
I was learning Russian in school since the 5th grade and my mom would sit me down every evening with a children's book in Russian so I could practice reading out loud. But instead of calmly explaining my mistakes she would yell at me at the slightest mistake and call me dumb to the point that I would just cry and refuse to read. This made me despise the language and I completely refused to learn it, doing only the bare minimum in school for a grade, since the language was mandatory. Now, 7 years later I am finally coming back to Russian because I want to. I started listening to music, chatting with fellow speakers and while my vocabulary is very limited, I still remember the grammar and I try to use the language every day.
I've always avoided speaking in spanish because I would be met with hostility or humiliation even from my own parents as well. I lost a lot of fluency over the years but im relearning now.
Where is russian mandatory ? Ukraine ?
@@Comprends-ton-Dim she's Lithuanian, and here we have a mandatory second foreign language, besides English. It can be either German, Russian or French, depending on school. I had a very similar experience with Russian as well, but mainly due to the way it was taught in school. It was just focused on learning the grammar, reading and knowing words basically by rote, not actually using it in a natural way. That just turned me off from the language. Now 5 years later I'm also tempted to come back to Russian, but I'm kind of intimidated to try and find the time to learn it as I'm more focused on French now
@@justames5979 Interresting for me it was German (I'm French) so I gave up German but kept English. And I choose russian to study by myself
@@Comprends-ton-Dim was it also a similar case for you that classes turned you off from German?
Ps. Thank you for making this video. Is it strange to say it gives a little catharsis? I just find it really relatable. It can be even harder to get over that visceral reaction to the language we're learning post traumatic event when we're surrounded by it daily. Work/school, relationships, neighborhoods... it can be hard to stop and realize where that negativity is and to find our way to rekindle that initial love/ interest in the language we've been trying to learn.
To use an cliche, that foreign language in an immersive environment is a double edged sword. We can learn so much so much quicker, but in that immersion we can also drown. I'm still chasing after the balance between these things to this day.
Wow, interesting. It is my belief that balance is very important for us.
I study English, using your videos. This is really good experience I can use in my language-learning. Learning languages is beautiful!
Good English :D
I’m excited about your app :)
Me too
Your accent is interesting. It has some foreign twang in there instead of sounding like an NY accent
@@zenndez4050 His Dad is Nigerian and his mom is British/Irish. He was raised in NY though
@@z-past1454 does he speak any Nigerian language or Irish
@@dwaynekeenum1916 Nah, he speaks english, spanish (current language being worked on), mandarin chinese, dutch, french, russian, and japanese.
Finally someone pointed it out! :D
@Vic Rattlehead he definitely sounds American
Something similar happened to me too with Russian, casually) I had met this girl, with whom I talked everyday for the period of 6 months, and eventually we fell in love. I actually started to learn Russian so I could speak her native language, and I was in love with Russian for it; and we even had made plans together. Sadly, she felt attracted again to her ex and they started dating again, and the photos she uploaded, well, it was kinda hard to see.
I stopped learning Russian for over 3 months, but I started again, and I'm proud to say that now it's been 11 months since I started learning this beautiful language, and I still love it like the first day. I keep learning vocabulary everyday, seeing series and listening to music, and I'm happy that I didn't quit this amazing language
My heart goes out to you about the experience you had at the hospital. I had a similar experience with POTS, but it was in my own language. I'm sorry you had to go through that, especially in a foreign language. I find that it's sadly common for doctors not to take POTS seriously. I hope you're doing well!
Also if no one's recommended these to you, it's a good idea to ask your doctor to prescribe some compression tights or compression socks (the more leg coverage the better). My insurance doesn't cover it but I'm looking into getting some compression thigh highs; even the knee highs have been extremely helpful though - they help me be upright for much longer periods! My doctor also recommended a magnesium supplement, and that's helped a lot too.
Thank you for talking about these experiences! I wish you the best
Wow, I can't believe how unprofessional , insensitive and rude the staff were to you. This is infuriating. Dehumanizing treatment and absolutely 0% empathy.
I've never heard anyone talk about this, thanks for putting a name to this for me. Definitely went through some language trauma myself
My god I am so sorry for you... I believe in Belgium it's like in France, there is the "social security" and people tend to abuse this system (you can see people going in the emergency system for a small headache), and tend to over-exaggerate their symptoms, which annoy the medics. This could be why the dude was so angry; maybe he thought you did that too (well not a reason to be awful to a patient tho)
Any other place than brussels and he would've probably gotten better treatment. What confuses me the most is that he wasn't able to explain things in english. Dutch, French and English are all present in Brussles.
I'm a little surprised too. When I went to Flanders and the Netherlands everyone had near-perfect English.
Thank you for this video. 🙏💕 Before the quarantine started, I was living with my grandma but I moved in with my mom and stepfather. I couldn't get along with my stepfather due to some issues. I only moved in to be with my mom. During quarantine, he would say anything to belittle me and lower my self confidence, things like "You should eat less so you don't get fat" or "You should put on make-up" which made me feel shame, and later on I became depressed and barely studied my target languages. He's neglectful, manipulative, and narcissistic. He has nothing but pride for himself, just wanting to look good in public but in private he's a toxic monster.
Around July of last year, I moved back in with my grandma, but I couldn't go back to my old self. Once in a while, I would get panic attacks and I barely got out of my room because I felt broken. I wasn't the "old me" who was happy and had goals in languages and in life. The beginning of this year, I'm trying to get back to studying and learning to take care of myself with the help of my other family members.
Love you! Keep fighting! You are a warrior! Something that helped me a lot was reading a lot of posts from the Instagram account @the.holistic.psychologist and journaling with questions to get to the root of things that would trigger me. Focusing on love and kindness toward myself and others.
@@norma94 Thank you so much for your comment. 🥰💕 You're awesome! 😊🙌 I'll definitely keep fighting, it's not easy but never impossible.💪
As someone who works in healthcare especially as a POC I HATE seeing people getting mistreated by doctors and nurses. That was full on abuse. I hope some legal action was taken. I just want to hug you, literally no one should go through something like this. I'm not speaking for all French people but several people have told me French people are rude. (Inserts hearts) You seem like such a sweetheart.
This is so real and true. All it takes is certain people who are native to the language you're learning to make you hate it because of the way you were treated by them
I had a similar thing happen to me when I studied Italian in college. I loved the language and the connection it gave me to my Italian culture, but i had a terrible semester abroad experience. A lot of personal stuff was already going on with me before i left, but about midway through the program is when i consider the start of my most intense, years-long major depressive episode, and i couldn't help but associate Italy and the Italian language with those experiences and those to come. I also had a bad medical visit like yourself, but not to the degree you had faced. In the end I had to take a clean break from Italian and the people i met there. It's been 8 years, and i finally feel ready to dive back into the language in a major way, and i hate the skills i lost along the way. I was a comfortable intermediate. Now I'm stuck in false beginner purgatory =__=
I am fully Filipino and live with a mom who speaks native tagalog. For the first few years of my life, I spoke good tagalog in the Philippines until I had to move back to Guam, a primarily english speaking island. I lost my tagalog, and I grew up with my mom not speaking it around the house.
I would be so resentful at my mom's family just because I couldn't speak to them. I hated it. Even worse, me and my mom were mainly darker skinned on my dad's side, so we were...out of the ordinary. Because of this, I hated myself for not knowing Tagalog.
With the additive of having terrible focusing and developmental issues, Tagalog seemed impossible for me to learn. I couldn't understand the placement of ang, or ng, or ko, or all the other common words in the language.
I'm just now getting into learning languages again. I'm gonna be honest, there's a lot of tears to shed. A lot of tears have been shed. And that's okay. In the end, I want to be able to talk to my mom's family and my mom in her native tongue. It's okay to struggle, it's okay to cry.
I’m in the same boat as you, I never grew up in the Philippines but also because my parents are very distant from me, emotionally and physically and even linguistically they only speak Tagalog to themselves, also my mom always swears at me in Tagalog, so haha I really do have trauma, I hope that your doing well in your journey of learning it, because I’m going to properly learn it for myself
I'm verry sorry for your really bad experience in hospital but honestly as a french person, i'm not even surprise with all the stories that my family and friends lived in hospital...
Ikenna: *describes genuinely traumatic and heartbreaking experiences that discouraged him from learning certain foreign languages.
Me: uhm...I didn't feel like learning Spanish in middle school 'cuz...uh..my Spanish teacher was...uhm...kinda rude...sometimes?
Don’t beat yourself up. In school, a teacher can make or break a language for the students.
You don't have to go through something incredibly traumatic to have bad memories attached to something (like a language). If your language teacher didn't provide a safe space for you to learn, grow and make mistakes, I can totally see why you'd feel dissuaded from learning more. You can always give it another shot, though, and create new memories with it!
@@clairegittens3707 Honestly same. In middle school I had a horrible French teacher who (and I can say with the hands of an adult) really didn't like me and picked on me specifically: one example, my family had organised a trip and I had been out of school for 15 days: the first day I was back -I had gotten home the night before- she tests me even if I had a form written by my parents and gives me my country's equivalent to an F; she straight up told me " you shouldn't have travelled then" even though I was 11 and obviously hadn't person chosen to travel 😂. After middle school I abandoned french or 10 years, taking it up again at the end of uni (and being pissed that I would have been fluent by now)
@@franknstein5376 I really don't know if your teacher was a french native but If she was, it may explain some things
In France, it's extremely rude to travel while you're supposed to be in school
It's like saying "Idc about my lessons"
I am not saying it was your fault but sometimes cultural gap is the reason why we have some bad experiences with the language :)
@@ridadream5233 She was from the same country as me, so no culture shock present there.
I’m so glad to see your health is getting better. That’s always the first thing I think about when I tune into your videos. Good that you are continuing to push forward with your language learning through everything. I’m keeping you in my prayers. God bless! 💕
I was learning a language, had some bad experiences then was put off the language for many years. Now that a long time has passed and I’m a different person, I’m relearning it. I think the thing you said on it not being the same is true. It was such a beautiful, crazy fun feeling in a naive younger me. It’s cool now but I definitely miss that first love feeling where every achievement was one to be proud of. I’m glad I was able to start again and I guess I just gotta accept what happened and move forward creating new memories with the language.
Wooooo baby, ikenna uploaded woooo yeah
Wow as someone working in medical care I am horrified by the treatment you received!!! So sorry!
And I can feel for your romantic language trauma... I am so glad I didn't end up resenting the language I put in so much effort in for a relationship that unfolded to make me feel like I was living a lie when I finally came to visit him for 2 months in his country. And I also planned everything, rented out my home, got unpayed leave, got my flight ticket back and quarantine restrictions I put in SO MUCH WORK AND SACRIFICES for the relationship and the language. I stayed telling myself to see it as an opportunity to deepend my language skill finally but the sad truth is even that didn't pay put. I was too stressed and everyone kept talking to me in English despites me pleading them to use their language and also refusing at times to answer if they talked to me in English. I came home not really wanting to continue but thanks for my italki teacher who became a good friend I overcame it and even he sais it is a pitty I progressed now from home more doing only 3 classes a week with specific feedbacks than when I was there in the country of my targeted language (and already then I wasn't a beginner so it should have been easy to absorb)
I had something like this with Korean. I struggled with people reacting very negatively to me learning Korean and then I got very sick with cancer. I still can’t listen to certain songs because they played at times when I was very sick. I stopped studying for a while but I rediscovered my love for the language a few months ago. Sometimes I feel anxious while studying/speaking in a different way than your regular shyness. Thankfully I’ve been moving past that feeling and I have made a lot more progress than I did when I first started learning.
not just relating to language, i needed this relationship advice
7:54 when i tell you i screamed when he said Stromae, Stromae is a HUGE reason of why I'm learning french
editt; I keep saying he's a HUGE reason who am i kidding, he's the only reason :)
from a french guy that listen to a lot of music, his work is special, it hit different, love it
@@tsudaki4610 definitely, his songs aren't just random words with music being called a song, they actually have meaning behind it 🥺🥺 I hope he comes back soon, and is happy about his career at the same time
@@salmonella6051 very true.. I hope too but we don't know that much about this..
@@tsudaki4610 yeah true :'(
Stromæ
I'm sorry to hear that you had to experience something so awful in a belgian hospital. I'm belgian and live in brussel and I got starved for 3 days in a hospital after an operation. They forgot about me and even if my mother language is french it didn't change anything :/ but I think it depends on who is taking care of you and the hospital you go. Hope you'll find again the pleasure of learning french.
Here's two of my favorite saga audio that's fun to listen and to learn french : " Le donjon de Naheulbeuk " and " Reflets d'Acide". The first one is really accessible and easy to listen, the second one is really better in quality but the level of french is even hard sometimes for natives ^^
And thank you for all your work !
Ikenna, just want to send you my sincere prayers for your condition. I pray that the Lord would put his hand on you during this difficult time, and that he will make you stronger. Sending you love and peace 🤍
EDIT: As i thought I commented this first, that first story is heartbreaking and i feel like its such a fear of many expats to receive adequate medical care. I'm sorry you went through that :(.. I have this quite alot (not to the same extreme), i live in the Netherlands (i don't live in the Randstad area, so less expatty) and i'm learning Dutch so if spoken to really slowly and simply i can generally understand..however if I'm with my boyfriend..even if the appointment is for me or i'm paying, if its my medical appointment and info about me they ignore me and talk straight to my boyfriend in Dutch without even acknowledging me.. my dentist yesterday gave me the dirtiest look because i asked him to please speak slower (he doesn't speak English) and turned from me and decided just to tell my boyfriend about my teeth instead.. if i go places on my own its usually ok but being completely blanked out like this, really puts me off wanting to learn.. then i meet lovely Dutch people and i'm motivated again lol, but when these events happen you'd think it'd motivate you to learn but really it just makes you feel like a disconnected pathetic potato lol!
As a french who watch your videos, I'm sorry to hear that and now I'm happy that you decide to learn again our language ! 😀
Je te souhaite une bonne continuation pour la suite de ton apprentissage 🇨🇵
Thank you for sharing some of your stories and how to get through some of those tough times. Sometimes our experiences weren’t that major. Like trying to speak to native speakers in that language in that country it sometimes felt like no one really wanted to help us at all like they kind of shrugged us off, straight up walked away, and made us not want to continue our learning like we don’t speak their language at 100% so we don’t want to deal with it while some other countries seem more inviting and it felt they were more impressed/glad/patient that we were at least trying to learn the language. We realize people are diff and maybe we just caught some of those people on a bad day or something but that was just a general feeling we had. Really appreciate this video.
Hi Ikenna, glad to see that you recovered ! As a french myself, I can tell some hospital services are awful but cures are often cover up at least... I had a traumatic experience with english, some teachers I had made me into a living hell... One told me that I had to learn it like I was a child discovering the language in master dregree...! It was awful, I felt like shit. Sometimes I was so scared to be mocked that I wasn't able to answer to the questions and failed some exams like that... But well, now I know better :D I'm about to learn my ninth language, how are you doing with your app by the way? I would consider buying it when it will be released^^
Omg I thought it’s just me, I didn’t know that this is a real thing. Second example is exactly the reason why I had breaks with Russian and Polish. But I’m back again, cause god I love these languages.
finally found someone talking about this, you’re a godsend
Damn I feel like I should consider myself lucky for my own hospital experience, no food problem cause I wasn't hungry for 2-3 days, my own country so no language barrier, just the part where u get nothing for your pain sometimes for hours in a row ! And at first I couldn't even find the button to call the nurse...
You've been through a lot, yet you continue to move forward.
I hope to be stronger, so I can move forward as well.
For a very long time, I had a bit of an aversion to French too. In my case, I am a Fleming, and in Flanders, we have to learn French mandatorily from the fifth year of primary school. I didn't really like it, but had to get through it throughout my entire school career. For years after that, I avoided having to use French as much as I could, though I did have to use it occasionally, of course, since living in Belgium you can't really escape it. While it is a useful language to know in Belgium, I do kind of resent the mandatory teaching of it. Which led to resentment against the language. Recently, I have finally started to get over it. Because it's just so necessary for getting a job in Belgium, many jobs ask for some proficiency in French, so I have started learning it again. On my own this time, and by my own choice. And I am enjoying it actually. Currently, I am taking a bit of a break to focus on Greek, which I missed working on and is the main foreign language I study. But I plan to continue French in a week and a half.
To juxtapose my experience with French, I also learned English and German in high school. English is mandatory as well, from the first year of high school, but I already kind of knew quite a bit from just watching TV, as in the Dutch language area movies and series are often subbed instead of dubbed (or available as both). This made it a lot easier, and I didn't build up any resentment against it, at all and quite enjoyed it. German was an elective language since I studied Latin-Modern Languages. So in the fifth and sixth years of high school I had to take on a fourth language, choosing between German and Spanish. I went with German to round out the three national languages of Belgium and the West-European Trifecta of Major Languages (i.e. English, French, and German, if it wasn't obvious). Plus it's the most spoken language in the EU and Europe (not counting Russian), and Germany is a major economy, so that played into my decision too. But to get back on track, this was the first foreign language I ever studied by choice, even if it was in a school environment. But I enjoyed it very much, and again didn't have any resentment towards it as I did with French.
For the story at the hospital, I understand SO MUCH. I'm french and the medical system are awful. Not enough medical employees, etc...
Thank you, I realise why it was so difficult for me to learn English and other languages. Thank you dude.
I'm a Flemish Belgian living in Canada and I absolutely hate learning/speaking French. 8 years of awful French teachers did it for me. It was mandatory. However I absolutely love English. I'm sorry to hear about how they treated you in the hospital.
I know mine is really pathetic but I’m in high school, and I hate Spanish because my teacher didn’t like me at all. I only has her for 2 year but I hated Spanish efter that
Nice to see you uploading more! Greetings from New York.
This happened to me with Spanish. I became woke about how Spanish speaking people secretly scheme on Americans in Spanish and use the language barrier as a way of having power over Americans. However before I put 2 & 2 together I trusted my Hispanic coworkers to teach me work related things in Spanish. As soon as my first question came out of my mouth my coworker made fun of me in English, pointed at me & gossiped about me in Spanish & told me that my previous experience of being exposed to Spanish in High School meant NOTHING. To make matters worse I tried learned from my Spanish speaking supervisor who treated me like a toddler while explaining the language and laughed at me. Then I didn’t give up so I went to a Spanish tutor in California to do a diagnostic Spanish competency test on me & he would make mean & confused faces at me whenever I spoke at refused to teach me anything. I STILL didn’t quit so I went to the Spanish tutor’s supervisor who said she was “confused” about “how I could’ve had a bad experience” and that Californian Spanish speakers are much nicer than New York Spanish speakers. That’s when I realized that these individuals had been playing me the whole time & they really didn’t want me as a black woman to learn Spanish! So I’ve been dedicated to teach myself & only speaking to a native speaker when I am confident in what I’m saying. By doing that I went from elementary proficiency and not being about to speak sentences to now holding full conversations in Spanish with a limited working proficiency. I’m not gonna stop until I am bilingual!
It's my first time commenting here. I love learning new languages. your videos are very informative and motivational. I Stumbled upon this one and thought it might help me with my traumatic experience trying to learn French, from being ridiculed for way too long by my teachers in school. I was surprised you also happened to talk about another traumatic experience that hogged the last year and a half of my life, which is dealing and being diagnosed with POTS and hypermobility in the lack of supportive and sympathetic environment. I totally understand your pain, POTS can be very scary and traumatic. it's an invisible illness that ruined the life of many young adults,POTS and dysautonomia in general are very misunderstood and underdiagnosed. it took me alot of time and patience to finally learn to manage it and accept it's manifestations as a part of my daily life. I just wanted to tell you, you are not alone, you are a fighter, you got this, your pain is real and matters, just because others can't see it it doesn't mean it is not real. Always prioritize your health and keep doing what you love. I thank you for your efforts and the quality content you offer. Trying to learn new languages is one of the few things that kept me from going mad from being bound to bed for months.
I can relate, I am learning english still, although I know a lot already. I was getting into language learning so started following you, Xiaoma, and Laoshu (R.I.P), and in Laoshu's vids the subtitles always had words like "moreover", "therefore", "nevertheless" and now I dont want to keep learning english, and can't complete a sentence with those words without a pause or straight up crying. I was watching his last stream and next day I was thinking about how would I react if I saw him IRL, but things happened and news came, the way all came to me really upset me. I just really feel depression-like feeling when learning english or "formal" version.
Dude what? Laoshu is dead?
yep, xioma made a video, Ikenna a history in yt, and there are lots of vids talking about it
please dont be discouraged! Native english speakers almost NEVER use these phrases unless its an interview, something for school or business. No one ever speaks like this to adult outside of a work or school setting!
@@Jess-737 Yep, just like emotional triggers. I'm mexican so I speak spanish, but never lived in the US though, thx for the compliment 🙂.
@@chsinskyy Thanks for those encouraging words
I’m glad you made this video! I also feel
like I have this with Japanese but rather it was a whole lot of small, distressing situations as I came to understand the culture. Being American and being a direct person, it was very stressful trying to navigate plans and relationships with other Japanese people, because of their indirect way of communicating. Having to learn all this the hard way by not receiving texts back from people, and friendships just not progressing and me not knowing why.
Now I understand Japanese culture way better but when I hear and study the language, I still feel the anxiety from figuring it all out.
But then again, at the same time, think I have come to the realization that generally, I don’t prefer to be in indirect, collectivistic cultures. Because not being able to express myself as an individual I think can be traumatizing, at least for me. Though I am still really interested in learning Japanese culture through reading up on it.
i just want to say thank you for sharing your story about the hospital experience, i cant imagine being in that much pain/fear surrounded by people who dont care about you, im glad you pulled through and that your gf was eventually able to be there for you!!!
I also have the reverse experience. With Italian, I have never lived in Italy, never visited, never had any friends... So when I feel stressed, I go home, turn off my phone etc, and escape into an Italian movie or series. Recently, Taiwanese Mandarin is the same way for me.
PS, Stromae is awesome.
Can you give me some good Italian series ?
@@mydlear4238 Starting out, I mostly watched American shows with Italian dub. Content you already know in your own language is easier. Plus, I started pre streaming sites, so I bought physical DVDs. Would have sucked to invest in an actually Italian Seri’s, only to discover I hate it. My first series was Una Mamma per Amica - Gilmore Girls in English.
More recently, there’s Netflix. I loved curon, and Luna Nera. Carlo and Malik is good, but race pops up often, so some moments are hard to watch. There’s a new series called Zero, that looks good. Also found this list on the internet. joyoflanguages.com/italian-tv-shows/
Generally, I think series are better for learners. since the scene is set in episode 1, you already have an idea of plot and characters and can concentrate on listening to the language. However movies seem to be more readily available and often cheaper if you have to buy. Plus, you may already know some names like “ La Vita e Bella”, “Cinema Paradiso”, “ Umberto D”... And you can rewatch a movie more often.
One thing to be aware of though... Italy is relatively young, so regional dialects can be pretty different.You might want to watch a clip to make sure you can understand. For English movies dubbed in Italian, everything by Disney has super standard crispy Italian pronunciation. If you feel like spending money, you can buy on Amazon IT.
Good luck!
@@gogakushayemi wow, thanks a lot ! I’m gonna give them a try
7:52 Main reason I started learning french as well-I love Stromae’s music :)
Oh man, that hospital experience was beyond horrific!
First off, as a nurse I really want to apologize for the experience you had to go through at that hospital. You should have never gone through something like that and I hope you never have to again. Everyone deserves attentive and receptive care, especially in a situation like you were in. Also, those were great tips! Thanks for sharing your stories.
Very good video, these things happen and often. Still to this day I have some beef with some languages hehe. But yea as long as we take the time to digest emotions and learn from them we will keep moving forward. We are more resilient than what we think we are.
That happened to me with learning English. But at that time I still had compulsory English lessons in school without a way to avoid them. And that helped.
You should do a challenge where you see how fast you can learn Esperanto. It’s a really easy language, I reckon you could get it done pretty fast. Also sorry to hear about your experience in the hospital.
Is it even useful?
@@DiamondsRexpensive not really
@@DiamondsRexpensive not really that useful if you have learned other languages before, but I think it would be a fun thing to do.
@@alejandroackerman2908 then people only learn it to boast?
@@zachrobinson8454 why would one opt for fun, when one can have fun and useful at the same time? Two birds with one stone.
The big problem I'm facing with learning languages is that I get easily demotivated if somebody tells me that I should not learn a language for whatever reason. Like for example: I saw somebody tweet something a few months ago. He basically told people: "If you watch anime you can't learn Japanese just because you are a weeb watching anime." Which is like a big demotivation for me to learn Japanese for that simple reason. And another example with the german language. When people were telling me that I should not learn it. Because I learn it in school already and it won't work out since I'm not going to use it everyday anyways. Also I've been told before by my dad. That I should stop speaking English all the time, because I live in the Netherlands. And he told me I should pay more attention in Dutch and Tagolog because those are languages I've been born and been living with my whole life. My dad basically told me: "Stop paying attention in English, but Dutch in school because you don't have a decent grade." I have a B- which isn't too bad at all because the Dutch language in school is like next level and hard. And for my Tagalog It isn't really a problem. Cuz I understand most things and could have a normal conversation with people in Tagalog. So now I try not to look and hear what other people are saying that I should do, but I try to look what I want to do. And that's what I'm struggling with when learning languages.
Learn whatever you want
Learning additional languages isn’t a problem but don’t make the mistake so many people do where they virtually stop using their native languages and then are left with sub par English as their native language instead. Maintain your main important native and national languages and therefore those cultures first. Afterwards, the world is your oyster. Also, any language spoken by a G20 country can be useful and there are 14 to choose from.
This is a big and important topic. Thank you for talking about it like this. 🥺
I faced discrimination as a Korean learner in my own country. I never wanted to learn Korean after that.
OH MY GOD that experience. :'( Glad you are better now
Your illness and hospital experience really do sound traumatic...I’m so sorry you had to go through that especially since you’re so young (I’m 22 and still feel like a damn child) if you feel the need to kinda process what happened to you maybe therapy could really help! My mom was at the hospital for an unknown lung disease for months and had operations almost every day with unbearable pain, it haunts her to this day 😔 idk just something you could do, your emotional/mental state is important and valid!
Merci de partager ton histoire Ikenna.
I've been loving your videos recently man and damn, that first story that you told really hit me hard. It's good to hear that you're currently recovering and I hope you never have to experience anything that traumatic again, i wish you the best man. (btw im still watching the video so i haven't heard story no. 2 yet lmao)
Nice to see you as lively as ever despite these things
I’m a bit late but here’s my story. I started to refresh or learn Spanish at university. I already learned the basics at school and there were no problems at all. And my “trauma” is at university I started to get heavy anxiety and panic attacks about my future and about failing tests. I’m not the best at learning languages therefore I struggled to take the Spanish classes at the university and my anxiety to fail made me sick to learn it. It reminds me of the stress, the panic and the fear I had and still have. I started learning French instead for myself. No stress. No anxiety to fail. No one will judge if I’m improving to slow. Maybe one day I learn Spanish again.
bruh this is why I no longer want to learn Spanish anymore, language trauma! it's cool to learn there's a name for it and hopefully, in the future I'll want to get back to learning again.
Wow.. hearing that experience, I'm not expecting that kind of health service in a first world country.
I have experienced language learning trauma in a similar way. Two months after I moved to Brussels, I needed to go to the ER for unexpected medical emergency. I decided to take the bus to get there because I was feeling well enough that I could. It was the middle of the night and there was a drunk man yelling racial slurs in French and acting really aggressive on the bus. It was the only time I have ever had a problem with anyone on public transport in Brussels and I can usually handle people being crazy in public, but the adrenaline, stress, and my medical issue made me feel like I was going to die. I could feel myself passing out and getting tunnel vision.
My husband and I got off at an early stop and I had to walk the rest of the way. Looking back on it I realize that it was a bad idea to have not called an ambulance in the first place, but I survived lol. That man showed me the ugly face of hatred and racism within the context of the French language. Under the circumstances, it left me with disgust. I took a break for a while, but I ultimately started learning again and formed new (less stressful) memories in French!
Thank you for opening up! My dad didn't want me to learn French because his ex-wife was French. Sometimes he does help me but yeah. I understand him now.
Every time I struggle with my language learning, you always post a video that helps lol. I have not got so much a traumatic experience but just an unpleasant one regarding Spanish! Coincidentally, I had the experience as soon as my Pimsleur renewed which is a little annoying but motivating I suppose.
I'm a bit surprised a hospital in Europe wouldn't have an English translator available for patients or that a lot of staff wouldn't just be able to speak English. I guess that makes me re-evaluate how effective English is as a lingua franca. I wouldn't go so far as to say traumatic experience but I've had a lot of negative experiences speaking a foreign language and it sucks. Almost always when I'm in the country using the language so taking a break would be wonderful but isn't really an option.
Without giving too much information, I'm Hispanic (mostly) Mexican and my dad ONLY speaks Spanish. But throughout my life he was very strict and a rather bad person all round. Attempting to speak Spanish with him was always met with comparisons, scolding, ridicule, etc. And enduring it all those years has made me genuinely, literally unable to *speak* Spanish. I can read it, I can somewhat write it (I'm rusty), and I can understand like 65-70%(while my family is mixed spanish, they all speak English 95% of the time). I tend to know what I want to say-- and I really want to be able to-- but when I go to say it, it's as if that part of my brain is just *paralyzed*. It really makes me feel like a failure when I see all my siblings and my mom speak Spanish fluently (or near fluently) and I want to join in but am physically unable to. I could barely get through my mandatory Spanish class' speaking exam in highschool without going through some kind of breakdown because I could barely say the words I knew I wanted to say. I was able to do at least pass because my teacher was very kind and we were alone, but I couldn't help but feel bad for taking so long and seeming dramatic...
I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I hope you can make some new memories with the language and make it your own. Maybe movies, or RUclips accounts in Spanish that make you feel happy and good would help. it’s normal to forget, We all need repetition and fun. Take time if you need it but make it uniquely your own if you come back to it.
thank you for this video ❤️ I have a lot of trauma surrounding French that I'm trying to get over!
You are a fighter!!! Keep going! ♥️
I'm a half Chilean, half German gal. I was born in Chile, but for the first 15 years, I was raised in Germany. I used to speak fluent Spanish with my mom when I was little, almost only Spanish. But then I entered kindergarten and the kids and teachers did not like it, they demanded I speak German. So apparently I one day said to my mom I don't want to speak Spanish anymore. So I started speaking just German at home. And needless to say, when I went back to Chile, my Spanish was there, but absolutely not fluent. I've been getting better through school and university, but I speak with an accent and sometimes stumble or forget words. And it doesn't make it better that I'm on the spectrum and get easily anxious and frustrated. Just now I'm transcribing an interview and I don't understand half of what they're saying, but my mother can. I hate it. I can understand written Spanish very well, I finished as a translator, but spoken Spanish is just horrible to me. However, I curiously seem to have replaced my mother tongue with English which I can speak fluently and confidently.
very interesting topic, thanks for sharing your experience :) as a bilingual person whose native language isnt english but spanish, this is a topic that hits very close to home. My family and I travelled to England about two and a half years ago, my parents for work reasons and me & my sister to become familiar with english and the british culture. The thing is, I tended to idealize english people, I thought they were all somewhat educated and respectful, and I would be treated lovingly by everyone (naive me). Imagine my surprise when I found out that racism and bullying is actually a huge problem there, just anywhere else! some people obviously made fun of me not only for my basic english (which was full of elemental mistakes at the time) and strong accent, but also physical appearance. I clearly did not read texts as an average british person would, so a bunch of impolite kids would imitate my latino accent and laugh whenever I corrected myself. This made me feel a sort of rejectment towards the english language, which I had to overcome since you cant expect the world to accommodate to your interests :) now I can proudly say I am not too scared about speaking in english or any language that isnt spanish whatsoever, but it´s crucial to acknowledge this resentment that having negative experiences with a language/culture may generate :D thank you for speaking up about this as a personal matter!!
just LIKE* anywhere else :)
This is what happens to me every time I attend my French class. I just feel 0 confident about my french and the teacher it's always making corrections in front of the hall class, that means that I most to ashamed myself in front of 20 classmates. we already have take like 16 classes and we didn't learned even how to make a proper introduction... He still says that we need to put more effort into it... 😭😭😭 Sorry for my trashy English. (I guess we have different ideas of what is traumatic to us, just saying this in case you think is ridiculous)
Well, interesting to know that medical professionals have the same tendencies in other countries. It's baffling how once you are sick with something that's not a textbook quick fix, how hard it is to find doctors that are willing to put in effort. You don't even need the language barrier. Unfortunately, it's a common situation. The biggest challenge to recovery isn't diagnosis or treatment, but finding the medical team that's willing to do problem solving. Most often, the doctor lets you do the research, explain it to them, and they either follow through or get you to the right specialist that can follow through.
You are so brave, thank you for sharing that really inspired and motivated me
I’m so happy to seeing here again I’m also having a bad experience with learning but going to try again
I have two of these experiences in particular. The 1st was with a French tutor my parents got for me when I was learning French in high school as part of our curriculum in Canada. There were 2 instances where I kept getting something wrong she made me cry twice and said the "crying is for kindergartners". Surprisingly we still were on good terms until the end but yeah for awhile I hated those tutoring sessions at the time.
The 2nd one was while learning Korean with this girl through Hellotalk. I think she was the first person or at least one of the first people to respond to my messages. We got along really well and got super close, pretty much my closest friend on the app at the time. We talked about the possibility of meeting each other in real life. And then, out of the blue, she stopped replying to me. When I asked what what happened she said a bunch of complicated stuff about our conversations that would take me too long to write in this already long post, so in short she said that there may have been misunderstandings of the way I talked or something like that. Regardless at the point we stopped talking from then on. I sent her a message a month later trying to reconnect but nothing. I miss her everyday.
I understand it a lot, it happened to me with English
I started learning English just because it was a school subject and I liked it, but I was suffering bullying at school at the time. I was a scholarship holder and all my classmates went to the USA at vacation, but I didn't and I still don't have the money to travel internationally. Because of this, their english had a good pronunciation, and mine didn't, because I just guessed what the pronunciation was based on the word written. As I already was being made fun of, English classes became hell for me. It was the time that I was made fun in front of everyone, they did little musics to make fun of my pronunciation and laughted every time i spoke in class. It took me like, 5 years for me to be able to really speak and not just type in English, and at least 2 years to stop ignoring that english exists and that i had to learn it at school.
Nowdays my english is better than theirs lol but i still don't like English because i feel it was imposed on me, so even liking to consume english content in the internet, i don't actively study it
Great video, thank you Ikenna! 😊
I used to be obsessed with spanish- I took classes at college, read news, and even read literature by Mariano Azuelo and Gabriel Marquez. My dream was to teach and share the language to highschool students just like how I was inspired by my spanish teacher. I had to stop because of a horrible experience in a college class and since then I have been reluctant to speak and even hear the language because of the trauma. It's been well over a year since that and I have been slowly getting back into getting exposure but I feel like I have forgotten alot and have trouble comprehending things that I would have understood before.
I don't think I'll ever have the same passion for Spanish for some time, but I have been trying to make new positive connections with the language though chats with italki tutors and even signed up for a literature cass at another college. For what it's worth I don't regret it entirely because while on hiatus I started looking into other languages such as Portuguese and Dutch. Right now I have been taking Russian at a community college for a year and I'm thinking about majoring in Slavic/Russian studies. If I learned anything from this ordeal it is when one door closes another one opens.
Thank you so Ikenna for your content, this video inspired me to pick up my old spanish literature book and reminded me of a saying my Basque professor used to say in class: "Never give up".
thanks for telling this man, you are awesome, really keep up with the videos
I was engaged to a Haitian man at one point who spoke 5 languages. He introduced me to Portuguese, French & Haitian Creole. Then he disappeared on me & it turns out he was an alcoholic and a crook with unstable mood who only wanted to use me for money. Now when I listen to Haitian Creole music or French music I get depressed. I’ve take a break from learning those languages. I don’t want to look at Portuguese either. He spoke Spanish but he wasn’t my only outlet of Spanish so I haven’t stopped learning that. I believe that I’ll build up a new desire to learn those languages one day. God willing.
I was going to make a joke about me not speaking my native language because of traumas, and then I remembered one convo I had with one of my best friend. So to set the scene : we're french. They have a great lvl of english and so do I. And then we talked about the fact that it was indeed easier to talk about strong emotions (particularly traumas) in english (or any other language that isn't our native language) because there was some "distance" with those said emotions. So they dont affect us the same way. Pretty weird huh ?
Anyways, thanks for your video Ikenna, I hope you're doing great with your illness. Thanks for sharing those difficult times with us. Love from France.
@GD Player Sorry I didn't understand what you're talking about ?
I was put off progressing in Spanish for a bit because I asked a fella for help when I was vomiting in a park in Lubbock, Texas and he ignored me. "No hablo inglés"
"Estoy infermo. Necisito ayuda."
"*walks away"
I’m so sorry that this happened to you. Really like that is awful. I just started learning Spanish this year and I’ve been learning French consistently for about 5 and half years. I hope something like this won’t happen to me. But thank you for sharing, since it must be difficult.
I stopped taking because I had trauma in my native language.
Its nice to see the normalisation of strenuous experiencess