Why It's So Hard to Learn Another Language After Childhood | Hacker News Reader

Why It's So Hard to Learn Another Language After Childhood

time.com

32 pointsalberto_ol18 comments

The whole article hinges on an empty premise: "Possible explanations could include changes in brain plasticity, lifestyle changes related to entering the workforce or college or an unwillingness to learn new things — potentially while looking foolish in the process — that mounts with age."

I would argue (as a European) having learned 7 languages over the years (only 2-3 to any practical level, but including Greek and Latin as a firm foundation) only time matters. Invest the time and you can go to a pretty decent level in any language. Some are harder than others, fluency takes periods of continuous exposure, but it's all a function of time spent. Kids not only have time and emerse themselves by nature in their first language, but are obliged via social structures to practice (schools even come with punishment you know). The rest might give you some hindrance at 20+ but nowhere near the effect of don't spending the hours reading and talking.

To be honest I don't really think it is that hard.

For children it is a question about survival. They practice every time they open their mouth and try to communicate. 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If you did this for 6 months with lets say Chinese, I am sure you would pick it up very fast.

Adults have an advantage over children, I would even say. They already speak one language and have reference points already.

Translating one language to another by matching words of the new language to words of the language you already know is good in practice but gets in the way of fluency.

From observation of myself and those around me, I'd say that multilingual adults have an advantage. They are more used to the process of learning a new language. Learning a new language, especially one not closely related to ones you already know, involves letting go of many "reference points".

Conversely, monolingual adults (or even bilingual ones) have it harder exactly because of those "reference points" that they try to match to the new language. That's not how it works.

Agreed. It takes children about 7 years of intense exposure and practice to become fluent in their native language, and many more years to become really eloquent and quick-witted. Any adult who invests 7 years into intense exposure and practice can reach a pretty good level; there are aspects that are more difficult for them (accent!) but they also have the advantage of being able to read, take classes, ask specific questions about the language, etc.

When I was a kid I learned english by watching cartoons and movies with subtitles, in Portugal we have subtitles in pretty much everything except comercials.

As I grew up it was easy to learn a few words in other languages due to watching movies. This is extremely easy and I can see why other european cultures don't speak other languages more easily, all is translated to their native language so they don't have that correlation on what is being said with the meaning....

A personal experience: when I have to remember or tell numbers in English, they always come into my mind first as Chinese, making it harder to use numbers in English.

When I just started living in England, every time I have to tell someone my phone number, it was either a translation from my mental number in Chinese into English, or, a deliberate suppression of my instinct to speak or use Chinese while saying it in English.

On the other hand, if it's something without any obvious Chinese equivalent, it comes very naturally in English. For example, Marmite.

It's still the same for me with numbers, any numbers always just come up in French even if I'm speaking another language.

The first time I had to give a Canadian phone number in English, I just tried to translate it and I had no idea how people could say numbers like "five hundred and fourteen, two hundred fifty-seven, two thousands four hundred and fifty-five". It flows quite well in French. Well, the guy at the other end stopped me and told me that in English they don't bother and just say the numbers one by one.

French numbers come naturally to me, up to 69, then my brain slows down. Like for any foreign speaker, I assume.

For those who don't know French, 70 is "sixty ten" all the way to "sixty nineteen" at 79, then from 80 to 99 "four twenties" to "four twenties nineteen".

Another effect is that my French phone number comes out naturally in French, same for all the phone numbers of all the countries I've had a phone in.

You could use the Belgian and Swiss way to say 70 and 90: septante and nonante. They work just like the other -ante numbers, 79 is just septante-neuf, 99 nonante-neuf. It's a bit weird at first for French people, but easy to understand and much easier for you to use.

80 is huitante in some places in Switzerland, it's much less common (and many people expect "octante" instead, which is even less common) but people would still understand.

Producing the numbers is the easier part. Not losing the thread of the conversation when someone else tells you something about sixty-thirteen is the hard part.

I have a little experience in this area. I would sum up the reasons as:

1. Children put in more time. An adult who puts in an hour a day of study is studying hardcore, but a child will play with people or watch cartoons in a new language for hours and hours. When it comes to your native language you basically don't have a choice to use it for 12+ hours a day.

2. Most adults aren't used to learning new things. Children are learning new things all the time, it's their bread and butter. Adults often haven't learnt anything new since university age. Being a poor communicator in a new language is often very demotivating.

3. Adults can't shut off their native language. They're so used to speaking and thinking using their native language everyday that when it comes to a second language they can't shut it off. I find people who are good at suppressing their native language attain a far better level in the long run. Their are certain signs that someone is good at doing this, usually you can tell after a few meetings with them.

The article completely skips over the fact that adults just don't have enough time. Children don't have to raise children, go get their car fixed, mow the lawn. They are bombarded with native language at home, at school, while playing with friends. They could not not learn the language even if they wanted to. Whereas for adults, they are not bombarded with the language unless they move countries to be in an immersive environment. In a non-immersive environment you need to dedicate time to learn the language which is a fraction of the time children are exposed to while learning mother tongue.

I learned 4 after childhood. It takes pure practice and humble(to make many mistakes) and open(to practice) personality.

But I have never ever managed to learn a programming language well. So instead I became an economist and social scientist.

I'll tell you a secret. You don't have to know any of them well. You just need to be able to do a days good work (or heck, a quarter of a day) and you'll be ahead of most of your competition. I am sure this goes for most white collar work.

Why does so many sites implement GDPR with opt-out of tracking when the law explicitly states it has to be opt-in?

A lot of what we thought we knew about neuroplasticity and age has proven to be wrong. If it plays any factor at all, it appears to be secondary. This is good news for people of any age. Neuroplasticity decline cannot be controlled. Other factors can be.

Coursera course "The Bilingual Brain"

https://www.coursera.org/learn/bilingual

> This course explores the brain bases of bilingualism by discussing literature relevant to differences in age of initial learning, proficiency, and control in the nonverbal, single language and dual-language literature. Participants will learn about the latest research related to how humans learn one or two languages and other cognitive skills.

I took it and it is in line with my personal experience (German native, English and Russian second, a tiny - and by now mostly forgotten - bit of French, Arabic).

The TL;DR of the science according to that course: No it is not more difficult. The only thing that is different is the very basics of how you form and recognize sounds in their most basic form. You learn those in very early childhood. Late learners will use different areas of the brain, partially, but they won't be worse, except they'll have an accent especially if the sounds in the new language are very different from the ones you are used to.

How long does it take you to learn your native tongue? It's years for the basics, well over a decade to become proficient. What makes it seem like less of an effort may be that you don't have an choice when you are 3 years old about what else to do with your time. You MUST learn the language.

By now, English is just like my native language to me as far as listening is concerned. If I have to speak it gets a little bit more exhausting compared to my mother tongue if I have to do it for long stretches. I never, ever have to reach for the German word first, except when I really don't know the word in English: For example, there are sooo many special words about craftsmanship staff or machinery that I learned because I did a lot of that stuff as a child, but as an adult I only ever needed "daily life English" and "IT English", so overall I still know a lot more words in German simply because I never need(ed) them in my English-language life.

In Russian I feel completely at home and comfortably "understand" each and every word even when it's spoken very quickly - but I have no idea what they say. I understand the words on the "sounds" level, and I also have a feeling for the grammar, but since I rarely ever actually used the language my internal dictionary doesn't have nearly enough words for a useful conversation. However, I found/find it interesting, this dichotomy, that on the one hand I feel completely at home with that language on a very low level (sounds and grammar), and yet I cannot actually do anything with it because on a higher level the words and their meanings are missing.

I stopped being interested in learning more languages when I realized that I'm plenty busy just perfecting my knowledge of English, the one language I actually use. When I was proficient reading Stephen King novels and daily papers I picked up "The Lord of the Rings" and for the first 50 pages or so I had to consult a dictionary about ten times per page. Same when I read The Economist instead of daily newspapers, so many new words.

I found that I was no longer interested in small talk, something you can do after a relatively short time of learning a language, I was interested in deep(er) conversations, but learning enough of a language for that kind of conversation takes much longer. But how many deep conversations could you have in your native tongue at the age of ten? Okay, maturity also factors in, but overall I see no basis for a claim that learning languages becomes harder per se. As an aggregate effect, sure, I just pointed to a few reasons myself after all.

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