6 ms·

Do you mind sharing your age? Curious if youth played a part here - I'm in my 40s and wondering if I'll have as much success?

dkaleta 5y ago
I’m 34. I don’t think age matters that much. What matters the most is not even the method you use but the time spent with the language.
- jgwil2 5y ago
  To put it into perspective, children learn their native language through ~10 years of complete immersion, so of course they speak it incredibly well. Very few adult learners will ever have the opportunity to be immersed in a foreign language that thoroughly over such a long time, but if they did we would expect them to speak that language excellently as well (albeit perhaps with a slight accent).
wbsss4412 5y ago
I’m in my early thirties and similarly learned French from 0 to a conversational level in a bit over a year. (Though I was already pretty strong in Spanish so that helped significantly) The age thing is mostly a myth imo. If you put in the time and effort you’ll get a lot back. The biggest issue is the concept of fluency. A lot of people believe they have to be 100% perfect or they don’t “know” the language. In reality, from the moment you start you will continually become more and more comfortable in an asymptotic manner (no one knows 100% of a language, ie what percentage words in the dictionary do you know). The biggest piece of advice - get comfortable in dealing with ambiguity, and don’t try to force constructs from your primary language onto the one you are learning. Meaning: don’t say X word means Y word in my native language, therefore I can use it exactly the same (it’s a different word, VERY likely with different connotations).
- laurieg 5y ago
  You've hit the nail on the head! Being comfortable with ambiguity and not knowing something 100% is crucial. I've observed many language learners over the years and if someone has a habit of translating every word they see into their native language before they are satisfied then they usually make slow progress learning a second language.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    Exactly. A corollary to this is that this is the reason why memorizing flash cards/massive lists of words can be counter productive. A degree of that is helpful to start, but you really need to see words in proper context, repeatedly.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  “ don’t try to force constructs from your primary language onto the one you are learning.” That’s super important. This also applies to translated texts. Something somebody in Iran says may sound crazy when translated straight but may just be a normal thing in their language. As a German it took me a long time to understand that when an American says “we should have a beer someday “ that this means that you most likely will not have a beer with that person.
300bps 5y ago
I am almost out of my 40s. In the past year, I've gotten three AWS certifications and learned new hobbies from scratch (ex: electronics component-level repair). I haven't seen evidence that my ability to learn things has slowed down yet. I think a lot of "age-related" problems are more related to lifestyle until about 60. When you're 20, you can eat sugar, fat and salt all day long while sitting on a couch and get along pretty well. When you're 40, you'll get fat and your body will atrophy. There's a solution though: eat healthful foods, exercise, manage stress, pursue important goals, be active socially.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I'm just dieting down for a second time, and I'll attest to this. Both times what got me to take diet seriously again was recognizing how sluggish I'd gotten, and cleaning my diet up again has a remarkably rapid effect.
- forty 5y ago
  The ability to learn things slow down dramatically when you get older, it's probably even more true for languages. It's fairly obvious when you look at kids. They can learn in the 5 first years of their life, without even thinking about it, to speak a language as well (at least accent wise) as any adult would do in 20 years of pretty intense studying.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Because kids aren't working full time jobs and stressing out over free time.
    - na85 5y ago
      There's more to it than that. Neuroplasticity exists.
      - youngNed 5y ago
        I'm sure it does, but you put me in a house, with 2 adults, house, feed and clothe me for 5 years that i don't have to worry about going to work and i guarantee you i will speak whatever language they speak a whole lot better than some 5 year old. Hey i'll even throw in another language and still be able to fight the 5 year old. With one hand.
laurieg 5y ago
Older second language learners have a harder time, but I don't think it's because of some kind of "weakening of the brain" with age. I think the real reasons are: * Older people can't remember the difficulty of learning their first language. They've been using it comfortably for years. * Older people have bigger vocabularies so the gap between their first and second language is even larger. * The discomfort of learning new things is less familiar for older peoples
- exeldapp 5y ago
  I agree. Maybe there's some truth in the whole "brain plasticity" talking point but how long does it take a child to become fully comfortable with speaking and writing a language? 8 years? Longer? Compared to an adult who can accomplish that in about a year. And that is when the child has no choice but to use that language, since they know no other.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Learned a few things like violin art and other stuff as a way to spend time with my kids. turns out I learn much faster than they do. The only difference is I’ve seen is I’m much more focused but they have much more free time. An hour of my focus learning is probably worth a week of their efforts.
- avip 5y ago
  Strangely missing: older people (40s) usually take care of X pretty small kids + N pretty declining elders while having Y hours of work + Z hours commute daily. Seriously - I don’t even have 2 hours a day
- robocat 5y ago
  “Studies comparing the rate of second-language acquisition in children versus adults have shown that although children may have an advantage in achieving native-like fluency in the long run, adults actually learn languages more quickly than children in the early stages (Krashen, Long and Scarcella, 1979.)” “Adults are quite strategic in their learning, compared with children. They are generally self-motivated, use time effectively, and can apply themselves to lengthy tasks.” My personal opinion is that the #1 block to fluency as an adult is the concentration on written resources and trying to apply rules. Children learn by mimicry, but adults learn by resources, which creates errors. You can tell by listening to people that have learnt English as a second language, and understanding the source of the errors they make.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“I was learning for about 2h a day, 6 times a week. I would read articles, books, websites in Spanish” If you put in that much time you will learn no matter your age. Same for children. They are supposed to be better at language learning but in the end they spend a lot of time that adults often don’t have or don’t want to invest.
adastra22 5y ago
I’m in my late 30’s and learning Chinese and Japanese simultaneously. The age thing is almost entirely a myth. There are three factors in which age matters: 1. Older people get set in their ways, and learning a language requires rethinking how you think. This limitation is purely psychological and not biological and you can avoid it merely by giving it an honest attempt. Learning a foreign language can be a great way to to keep your mind fresh. 2. TIME. Learning a language requires thousands of hours of commitment. Young people have time to commit to it. Older people with work and careers do not, and so often don’t make as much progress. But if you chart progress vs. hours studied, age disappears as a factor. (There are studies of this, but I’m on mobile right now and can’t pull them up.) 3. Truly young people (under the age of 12) still have the ability to hear sounds not used in their mother tongue. This is why transplanted kids can speak fluently and pass as natives, but adults and even teens develop heavy accents. Older people still have enough neural flexibility to retrain their ear, but it takes much more time and conscious effort. This is the only truly biological age-related factor, and countering it just requires a bit more time and conscious attention. If you are learning a languages as a busy adult, the key is to find ways to immerse yourself in the language, even if it is just passively listening to things on a loop while you do your day job, listening to audiobooks during your commute, and always having a study book or flash cards at hand everywhere you go. You need to study not 10 minutes a day, but 5-10 hours a day—but if you’re smart, that time will double dip for other things and you can get away with just 1 hour a day of real committed study, and the rest is various forms of background practice throughout the day.

dkaleta 5y ago

I’m 34. I don’t think age matters that much. What matters the most is not even the method you use but the time spent with the language.

jgwil2 5y ago
To put it into perspective, children learn their native language through ~10 years of complete immersion, so of course they speak it incredibly well. Very few adult learners will ever have the opportunity to be immersed in a foreign language that thoroughly over such a long time, but if they did we would expect them to speak that language excellently as well (albeit perhaps with a slight accent).

wbsss4412 5y ago

I’m in my early thirties and similarly learned French from 0 to a conversational level in a bit over a year. (Though I was already pretty strong in Spanish so that helped significantly) The age thing is mostly a myth imo. If you put in the time and effort you’ll get a lot back. The biggest issue is the concept of fluency. A lot of people believe they have to be 100% perfect or they don’t “know” the language. In reality, from the moment you start you will continually become more and more comfortable in an asymptotic manner (no one knows 100% of a language, ie what percentage words in the dictionary do you know). The biggest piece of advice - get comfortable in dealing with ambiguity, and don’t try to force constructs from your primary language onto the one you are learning. Meaning: don’t say X word means Y word in my native language, therefore I can use it exactly the same (it’s a different word, VERY likely with different connotations).

laurieg 5y ago
You've hit the nail on the head! Being comfortable with ambiguity and not knowing something 100% is crucial. I've observed many language learners over the years and if someone has a habit of translating every word they see into their native language before they are satisfied then they usually make slow progress learning a second language.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  Exactly. A corollary to this is that this is the reason why memorizing flash cards/massive lists of words can be counter productive. A degree of that is helpful to start, but you really need to see words in proper context, repeatedly.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“ don’t try to force constructs from your primary language onto the one you are learning.” That’s super important. This also applies to translated texts. Something somebody in Iran says may sound crazy when translated straight but may just be a normal thing in their language. As a German it took me a long time to understand that when an American says “we should have a beer someday “ that this means that you most likely will not have a beer with that person.

300bps 5y ago

I am almost out of my 40s. In the past year, I've gotten three AWS certifications and learned new hobbies from scratch (ex: electronics component-level repair). I haven't seen evidence that my ability to learn things has slowed down yet. I think a lot of "age-related" problems are more related to lifestyle until about 60. When you're 20, you can eat sugar, fat and salt all day long while sitting on a couch and get along pretty well. When you're 40, you'll get fat and your body will atrophy. There's a solution though: eat healthful foods, exercise, manage stress, pursue important goals, be active socially.

vidarh 5y ago
I'm just dieting down for a second time, and I'll attest to this. Both times what got me to take diet seriously again was recognizing how sluggish I'd gotten, and cleaning my diet up again has a remarkably rapid effect.
forty 5y ago
The ability to learn things slow down dramatically when you get older, it's probably even more true for languages. It's fairly obvious when you look at kids. They can learn in the 5 first years of their life, without even thinking about it, to speak a language as well (at least accent wise) as any adult would do in 20 years of pretty intense studying.
- echelon 5y ago
  Because kids aren't working full time jobs and stressing out over free time.
  - na85 5y ago
    There's more to it than that. Neuroplasticity exists.
    - youngNed 5y ago
      I'm sure it does, but you put me in a house, with 2 adults, house, feed and clothe me for 5 years that i don't have to worry about going to work and i guarantee you i will speak whatever language they speak a whole lot better than some 5 year old. Hey i'll even throw in another language and still be able to fight the 5 year old. With one hand.

laurieg 5y ago

Older second language learners have a harder time, but I don't think it's because of some kind of "weakening of the brain" with age. I think the real reasons are: * Older people can't remember the difficulty of learning their first language. They've been using it comfortably for years. * Older people have bigger vocabularies so the gap between their first and second language is even larger. * The discomfort of learning new things is less familiar for older peoples

exeldapp 5y ago
I agree. Maybe there's some truth in the whole "brain plasticity" talking point but how long does it take a child to become fully comfortable with speaking and writing a language? 8 years? Longer? Compared to an adult who can accomplish that in about a year. And that is when the child has no choice but to use that language, since they know no other.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Learned a few things like violin art and other stuff as a way to spend time with my kids. turns out I learn much faster than they do. The only difference is I’ve seen is I’m much more focused but they have much more free time. An hour of my focus learning is probably worth a week of their efforts.
avip 5y ago
Strangely missing: older people (40s) usually take care of X pretty small kids + N pretty declining elders while having Y hours of work + Z hours commute daily. Seriously - I don’t even have 2 hours a day
robocat 5y ago
“Studies comparing the rate of second-language acquisition in children versus adults have shown that although children may have an advantage in achieving native-like fluency in the long run, adults actually learn languages more quickly than children in the early stages (Krashen, Long and Scarcella, 1979.)” “Adults are quite strategic in their learning, compared with children. They are generally self-motivated, use time effectively, and can apply themselves to lengthy tasks.” My personal opinion is that the #1 block to fluency as an adult is the concentration on written resources and trying to apply rules. Children learn by mimicry, but adults learn by resources, which creates errors. You can tell by listening to people that have learnt English as a second language, and understanding the source of the errors they make.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

spaetzleesser 5y ago

“I was learning for about 2h a day, 6 times a week. I would read articles, books, websites in Spanish” If you put in that much time you will learn no matter your age. Same for children. They are supposed to be better at language learning but in the end they spend a lot of time that adults often don’t have or don’t want to invest.

adastra22 5y ago

I’m in my late 30’s and learning Chinese and Japanese simultaneously. The age thing is almost entirely a myth. There are three factors in which age matters: 1. Older people get set in their ways, and learning a language requires rethinking how you think. This limitation is purely psychological and not biological and you can avoid it merely by giving it an honest attempt. Learning a foreign language can be a great way to to keep your mind fresh. 2. TIME. Learning a language requires thousands of hours of commitment. Young people have time to commit to it. Older people with work and careers do not, and so often don’t make as much progress. But if you chart progress vs. hours studied, age disappears as a factor. (There are studies of this, but I’m on mobile right now and can’t pull them up.) 3. Truly young people (under the age of 12) still have the ability to hear sounds not used in their mother tongue. This is why transplanted kids can speak fluently and pass as natives, but adults and even teens develop heavy accents. Older people still have enough neural flexibility to retrain their ear, but it takes much more time and conscious effort. This is the only truly biological age-related factor, and countering it just requires a bit more time and conscious attention. If you are learning a languages as a busy adult, the key is to find ways to immerse yourself in the language, even if it is just passively listening to things on a loop while you do your day job, listening to audiobooks during your commute, and always having a study book or flash cards at hand everywhere you go. You need to study not 10 minutes a day, but 5-10 hours a day—but if you’re smart, that time will double dip for other things and you can get away with just 1 hour a day of real committed study, and the rest is various forms of background practice throughout the day.