The Language Learning Struggle Is Real

I speak one language: English.

One and a half if we’re counting sarcasm.

Unfortunately, sarcasm is not recognized by most language-learning apps, despite my belief that it’s a valuable communication skill. It has certainly gotten me through plenty of awkward conversations, though perhaps not always in the way intended.

The irony is that I genuinely love other cultures. I can spend hours learning about mythology, history, traditions, and even obscure details like which soil type produces a region’s signature grape. Tell me about ancient legends, regional foods, or why one country’s architecture looks different from another’s, and I’m all ears.

Ask me to learn the language, however, and suddenly my brain decides it’s time to investigate a moth that just flew past my peripheral vision.

Some people seem to absorb languages effortlessly. They’ll watch a few videos, practice for a couple of months, and casually emerge speaking three dialects and ordering lunch like a local. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to convince my brain that vocabulary flashcards deserve the same level of attention as random internet trivia.

To make matters worse, I have an unfortunate tendency to notice pronunciation errors. I may not be fluent in Japanese, but if a professor mispronounces the Japanese word for “no,” there’s a good chance my brain will spend the rest of the lecture silently screaming corrections into the void.

The struggle is real.

At best, I can usually identify a handful of languages by their sounds, rhythms, or a few familiar words. It’s a skill that’s useful enough to be interesting and useless enough not to count on a résumé.

It bothers me a little because I work for a global company where multilingual conversations happen regularly. Listening to coworkers switch effortlessly between languages can feel a bit like watching linguistic superheroes perform feats beyond my mortal capabilities.

Still, hope springs eternal.

One day I’d like to learn Japanese, Korean, and French. Will it happen quickly? Probably not. Will there be moments when I forget everything I learned because a butterfly, moth, or particularly interesting cloud wanders by? Almost certainly.

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that curiosity doesn’t require fluency. Even when I can’t speak a language, I can still appreciate the people, history, stories, and cultures behind it.

And until I finally master a second language, I suppose I’ll continue communicating in the two I know best:

English and sarcasm.