Something I also learned the hard way...
“I thought Chinese would be easier to learn”. 1924.
“I had begun studying Chinese, but after a few classes I made a conscious decision not to continue. In the time it would take me to acquire the mere fundamentals, and master a very elementary level of Chinese, l could be fairly proficient in two European languages.” From Margarita Kuznetsova-MacDonald, Shanghai’ka (Girl from Shanghai), 2006.