I've tried no less than 4 times to learn Spanish. High school, twice out of school, and then uni. It's just not getting through. I'm a communications graduate, so it's not like language isn't one of my strong points.... Just doesn't seem to carry over to any other language.

Most people don't really understand how many total hours of purposeful learning and actual usage is needed to become proficient.

For Japanese, it typically takes people who can't already read 漢字 about 1,325 hours to reach N3 (conversational), and 2,200 for N2 (roughly business). That means if you want to get to N2 in only one year, expect to study like five to eight hours a day.

So don't feel too bad if you can't.

Or do, and use that frustration to motivate your study.

I studied a book going over "chagatai tili" in highschool.

I remember absolutely 0 words or grammar.

I retained enough to provide basic information to my ESL kiddos/parents, at least in Spanish. Use it or lose it, I really think.

I took Latin in high school, but I pretend it's esperanto to remain an oddball.

I read in English many years ago, but I'm not fluid speaker. My English is rigid. Then, you're not the problem nor your teacher.

Imagine that you are learning the Chinese language if from Latin based to Latin based is a nightmare.

I can count to ten, say hello, goodbye, and thank you. Other than that, the biggest advantage was that I can at least pronounce things fairly accurately, even if I have no idea what I'm saying. Vocabulary is the biggest issue.

I've had French and German for 13 years. I don't speak a word of French and can say very basic things in German, but not complete sentences.

I took German in primary school (0.5 or 1.5 years, I forget which), Spanish and Korean in late primary school/early high school (3 years), French (5 years) and Vietnamese (1 year) in high school. Of these, I can hold a very basic conversation in French and have good enough grammar to put together fairly sophisticated sentences, very slowly, using a dictionary; and can read the Korean script (the same way someone who speaks Turkish but has literally never heard a word of the language can "read English" because their language uses the same script) and barely any more than that, in any of those languages.

I blame the fact that I changed languages so much for my poor skill in all of them. (Though a lack of will or immersion certainly has a fair amount to do with it, too.)

I took one of my country's official languages in high school and I still speak it like shit ...

I took one semester of Russian in uni and I still can read the Cyrillic alphabet

Have you tried using it?

Sorry your school sucked, I guess?