I'm touched by your concern for my well being
Most of what you say is fair enough, I guess. Comparing me to the Dutch is like comparing apples and oranges (so to speak) though.
There are pressures on learning different languages like French, German or English that just do not apply to me learning Dutch (and French and German)
There just aren't; starting with a the simple numbers game: 27 million people speak Dutch as a first or second language, between 900 and 1500 million do so for English. Dutch isn't the language of Hollywood, or of the cultural and economic behemoth that is the US as a whole.
Britain is not sandwiched between larger nations with different languages through sheer geography if nothing else. I don't hear French, German or Dutch spoken as a might do if I were in a hub of languages, right at the heart of Western Europe like the Netherlands, and have no way to practice and brush up by talking to someone in their native tongue (after all, it's one thing to learn a language, but if you're not going to use it regularly the ability withers away). I'm less likely to travel over the border to Belgium or France, or Germany, as it's not down the (borderless, thanks to the Schengen Agreement) road- it requires planning, airports, passports and the like and if I'm going to the effort of that I may as well go further afield, or at least vary it so it's somewhere different every time.
Were the situation otherwise, I have no doubt I'd be in that 80%, but then, I'd also be a different person, with a different upbringing.
Also, there's a difference between your first and other languages- one is a subconscious acquisition, the other is a concious learning- if my father was French, or I'd spent great chunks of my childhood in Germany, I'd certainly be bilingual, if it was both, I'd be trilingual. There's nothing special about learning your mother tongue(s), it just happens.
Right, point 2.
Learning a language is a skill set. I don't have it but I have others to compensate. I'm not going to demand a company changes it's business practice to suit me in a job interview, I'll apply for positions where the skills I do have matter more than the skills I don't. Like I would do with any other skill, why is language an exception?
Point 3
It wasn't just that it was hard, but also that the incentive wasn't there and that I didn't enjoy it. My mind is just wired differently to someone who enjoys learning languages. Sorry. Working hard, on something that gives you little satisfaction or enjoyment, when it's useful, but not essential and - where as I mentioned above- no one else speaks it making it a lonely pursuit as well as hard to maintain is not "character building" or "hard work is it's own reward" it's masochism.
Point 4
Why? Why don't I apply my energies to some other skill set that I enjoy more, rather than trawling through language after language until I find "the one" (not that this is my dating technique)
