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Comment by Smudgya | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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