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I've recently wondered, is the common knowledge that kids pick up languages quickly and better than adults really true? Adults have a much wider range of skill

I've recently wondered, is the common knowledge that kids pick up languages quickly and better than adults really true? Adults have a much wider range of skills and far more knowledge than children, adults already have some of the most important aspects of thinking down: a set of concepts about the world. Yet many struggle to learn a second language past a certain time in their life. Clearly children learn languages better than adults, a near 100% success rate for children picking up their first language, to what may be something less than 50% success rate for adults (guessing these numbers, but its clearly lower for adults). As a child though, what do you spend nearly every waking minute doing? practicing and learning language, usually from their mother. Where as adults, usually they give up not because its impossible, but because its too hard -- and they have better things to do! Is ten thousand hours of language study as a kid really worth ten thousand hours of language study as an adult? I would be interested to hear if anyone knows of research looking into the actual hours/work put in to study a second language to get to some certain level of proficiency where the subjects started learning at different ages (5 years, 10 years, 15, 30 years old etc.)

barry-cotter 17y ago
I've recently wondered, is the common knowledge that kids pick up languages quickly and better than adults really true? The question is insufficiently precisely formulated to be answered. Unreferenced BS follows. As you pointed out children don't actually pick uplanguages that fast. It takes a motivated English native speaker about 600 hours to achieve near native fluency in German if they have any gift for languages. That's just classroom and home study, not talking immersion. It takes on the order of 10,000 hours for children to learn a language with native fluency. Even for children who started learning a language by immersion before 14 (approximate cut-off point for native fluency) there's a decent statistical relationship between vocabulary and the age at which they started learning. Obviously if you moved with your parents to X at ten and are a voracious reader you'll beat the deprived kid from the slum estate, statistical relationship. Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously. It is possible but incredibly hard for an 'adult' (14+) to learn a foreign language natively, unless they're a biological freak (hyperpolyglot, remembered from SciAm, treat with appropriate caution)
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously. Yes, being quite fluent in a language is just a matter of effort. But really speaking like a native -- this is exceptionally hard. My dad's English is incredibly good for someone born in Korea. His grammar is impeccable, and he's completely fluent. But I still catch that he still has to think a little bit about L and R sometimes. (And he's been at it for 60 years!)

barry-cotter 17y ago

I've recently wondered, is the common knowledge that kids pick up languages quickly and better than adults really true? The question is insufficiently precisely formulated to be answered. Unreferenced BS follows. As you pointed out children don't actually pick uplanguages that fast. It takes a motivated English native speaker about 600 hours to achieve near native fluency in German if they have any gift for languages. That's just classroom and home study, not talking immersion. It takes on the order of 10,000 hours for children to learn a language with native fluency. Even for children who started learning a language by immersion before 14 (approximate cut-off point for native fluency) there's a decent statistical relationship between vocabulary and the age at which they started learning. Obviously if you moved with your parents to X at ten and are a voracious reader you'll beat the deprived kid from the slum estate, statistical relationship. Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously. It is possible but incredibly hard for an 'adult' (14+) to learn a foreign language natively, unless they're a biological freak (hyperpolyglot, remembered from SciAm, treat with appropriate caution)

stcredzero 17y ago
Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously. Yes, being quite fluent in a language is just a matter of effort. But really speaking like a native -- this is exceptionally hard. My dad's English is incredibly good for someone born in Korea. His grammar is impeccable, and he's completely fluent. But I still catch that he still has to think a little bit about L and R sometimes. (And he's been at it for 60 years!)