Have you ever attempted to learn a foreign language but gave up on it? If so, which language(s) and why did you stop?

I took Spanish in high school and passed the Regents, but I didn't have enough opportunities to use it.  I can pretty much make myself understood in a pinch, but I'm far from proficient.

Polish.

My Polish friend requested that I communicate to her in English only.

¿Qué?

I'm a hopeless case.  I tried to learn Portuguese but I was so shy I would not speak in class.  This was when I was about 20 and I just dropped the class.  My husband and FIL were also in the class.  They had decided to create an import business importing from Brazil into New Orleans where we would be living at first.  I told them they would just have to find some Portuguese-speaking people to hire.  Yes, it caused a little riff but even I knew that that moment was very important for my independence as a person married into a wealthy strong conservative family.

I also have tried to learn Spanish twice.  Both time I was using software and both times I failed.  I have learned to recognize many words in other languages as well, simply by being in different countries and having friends who have come here from other countries but still use their native languages among their own families.  I learned quite a bit of Italian growing up simply because in many of my friends' homes, Italian was all that was spoken.  Same for Greek.  I mean just words, not understanding sentences.  I keep the closed captioning on my TV on all the time.  I watch many foreign films. This helps learn language.  I've shared before that I have a friend in Europe who learned English by watching movies in English and reading her own language.  She speaks perfect English now.  She took night classes to learn how to write in English too.  I'm not having the same level of success, but just recognizing key words and phrases is helpful. This post was edited by Thriftymaid at May 31, 2023 4:50 PM MDT

Does Latin count? I took it in high school. I can still translate mottos and coins.

Seriously though, in the 1960s, our local area had a large influx of Italian immigrants. Latin is the basis for Italian and English so it wasn't that difficult to pick up some of the language. I actually bought an Italian/English dictionary. I haven't kept up with it, so I'd need that dictionary to understand it now.

I couldn't keep up with it because life happened. I went to live in the DC/MD area for about five years. When I returned to this area, I was married with children. This post was edited by NYAD at May 31, 2023 4:51 PM MDT

Australian. Impossible.

Japanese. The school I went to stopped offering it as an elective just before I started eighth grade. Never had much of an opportunity to pick it up again.

Spanish. I could learn the words but putting it together in a sentence was not working for me. 
But I can and have helped customers who spoke Spanish, I was able to figure out what they needed and able to get it problem fixed. 
(I worked at Home Depot and a Spanish contractor had ordered a special sized window. But he ordered it for the rough opening size not the finished opening size. The window he ordered was too big.)

French.

At school: a compulsory part of the curriculum, but in the upper school's Fifth Year (ending at or approaching age 16) we could choose which subject to drop from the menu of national school-leaving examinations called the General Certificate of Education 'Ordinary Levels'.*

I dropped History and French, largely through thinking I would not be able to remember enough for passing examinations, and it gave me more time to revise for the other subjects. I struggled with all those irregular verbs and gendered nouns, too.

Our family had never had holidays abroad and I honestly saw myself never visiting France - its nearest coast across the English Channel, was less 100 miles South of our home. (Though the ferries all used ports at least that distance to our East.)

Only a few years after that decision, I visited France for the first of I think about ten holidays there...

I learned a few key words and phrases in the language of each country I visited. 

I've forgotten most of the French I learned in high school. I didn't try very hard. 

By the end of a two-week holiday on Crete I was quite pleased I could "translate" the sign on a large warehouse-like building near our accommodation.

Using the alphabet in the phrase-book, I worked out the gist of the Roman alphabet version of a word composed of what normally to me were Physics and Maths symbols. I'm sure dear little 'pi' was in there.

"phyt.... phyto... phyta..."

Ah! Suddenly light dawned. Phtyo. Oft seen in certain scientific texts.  Plants.

Yes - the place was a garden-centre.