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losing my interest to learn Nihongo

First of all, I enrolled for an N5-N4 class because I applied to a Japanese Scholarship. But I didn’t get in, so I’m starting to lose my interest in learning Nihongo. I already finished N5 a few weeks ago, and now I think it makes no sense at all if I’ll continue N4 this Saturday. Cause where I’ll use it in the future, and even if I will, I can’t practice Nihongo everyday since I’m using my mother tongue and English more than Nihongo. N4 classes will end in December, it’s every weekend but college will start next month. What’s your advice?

7 comments

  1. If you don’t have any reason to learn it, stop learning it or find a reason. There’s nothing wrong with dropping a language, I’ve dropped plenty. If you really don’t want to drop Japanese it means you have another reason and that reason should be your motivation

  2. I can sympathize. This does not sounds like it’s a lost of interest, as much as it is fear of lost/wasted progress. What you mean is that even if you learn it, you won’t use it frequently. This is why I focuses on reading, and watching entertainment content in Japanese (Netflix, Easy Japanese News, twitter). I also feel reading proficiency would be more useful when I travel.

    I have been thinking that maybe a “facetime pal” that is native would be great, it’s just hard to make that connection. There are some services that help, but I have yet to do serious research on that. Any thoughts, or experience of others here is greatly appreciated.

  3. Japanese is a long, difficult, but ultimately fulfilling journey. If you can’t see reason to continue then don’t. I don’t think you really need a great reason to want to, I just think it’s a cool language and culture, that’s it. No practical reason really. But maybe that isn’t enough for you.

  4. >But I didn’t get in, so I’m starting to lose my interest in learning Nihongo

    This might be harsh, but if you want to learn Japanese, then find a way to learn it. There are a lot of (free) ways to learn outside of a classroom setting (and youll need to study outside the classroom to make any meaningful gains anyway). r/LearnJapanese has a great sidebar for Japanese of all levels. [https://learnjapanese.moe/](https://learnjapanese.moe/) is full of free resources to learn Japanese efficiently.

    >I can’t practice Nihongo everyday since I’m using my mother tongue and English more than Nihongo

    You have internet access… You cant read NHK Easy News everyday for a few minutes? You cant glance through your textbook for 10 minutes while youre laying down to sleep? If you dont have a textbook, you cant watch a YouTube grammar video for 10 minutes? You cant flip through some kanji flashcards? I think you saying “I can’t practice everyday” is really you saying “I don’t want to practice everyday”. No one here can help with that.

    Japanese is fun, fulfilling, and exciting to learn. But if you dont want to learn it, REALLY want to, then even the fun parts will feel like torture. I think you need to look inward and figure out why you really want to learn.

  6. No riches await at the end of the journey so if you’re not excited about the process or about what you’ll do once you get better then don’t bother.

  7. If your only concern is that you don’t need Japanese, then just don’t try to learn it.

    I study Japanese because I like the language and want to understand it. I’d like to visit Japan or maybe even live there someday, but that’s secondary, the main thing is simply that I learn what I like.

    If you don’t like it and don’t need it, why bother?

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