5 ms·

I don't understand the general gist of this article. No, it's not too late to reclaim it. I've learned languages in my 30's and see no reason why I couldn't co

by throwaway22032 3y ago

I don't understand the general gist of this article. No, it's not too late to reclaim it. I've learned languages in my 30's and see no reason why I couldn't continue to do so in the coming decades. If it were really that "painful" you'd do something about it.

stevezsa8 3y ago
How is your accent with the languages you've learned? I mean, do you think you could pass for a native speaker? I think the problem for the writer is they cannot say their name in the native accent. A similar but opposite example would be: a person from India who cannot say certain English words without an Indian accent.
- Affric 3y ago
  English is my first language (I don't say native as no one is born speaking a language). In English, I sound Australian in Australia but in Scotland sound like a Scot. My Spanish accent is pretty good, Latinos say I sound like a person from Spain. People from Spain say I sound like a news reader. My Portuguese accent is a lot dicier because I have learnt it from more people from many different regions of Brazil. I believe I could clean it up. You could put all this down to moving around as a child but really I have simply just attempted very hard to imitate the sounds I am hearing and have refused to be satisfied with less than the phoneme I am hearing.
  - stevezsa8 3y ago
    That's pretty cool, nice work learning the different languages. I guess if you moved around as a kid, you probably had to imitate language and behaviour to fit in.
lproven 3y ago
> I've learned languages in my 30's and see no reason why I couldn't continue to do so in the coming decades. I think you're giving your age away. I picked up basic German in 3 days of very hard work at age 20. It worked, I still remember it and it's still useful. In my early 30s I picked up basic Norwegian in about 6 weeks of light effort. I can still recall some of it and still communicate in it, very poorly. I also picked up a smattering of Spanish, Swedish and tiny amounts of Japanese without much effort in my teens and 20s. In my mid 40s, I started to learn Czech. After 3 years of effort, I was getting nowhere, so I started paying professional teachers. After 5 years of that, I just about struggled past level A2 (advanced beginner). Learning your first Slavic language in adulthood is brutally difficult. (New phonemes, vowel length as marker of minimal pairs, 4 genders + 7 cases + 2 plurals for all nouns + complex tense system including gendered verbs.) Takeaways: 1. Language acquisition gets much harder with age. 2. Learning languages closely related to your own feels hard but it's much easier. Learn something distantly linked or unrelated for a long drawn out sharp shock.

stevezsa8 3y ago

How is your accent with the languages you've learned? I mean, do you think you could pass for a native speaker? I think the problem for the writer is they cannot say their name in the native accent. A similar but opposite example would be: a person from India who cannot say certain English words without an Indian accent.

Affric 3y ago
English is my first language (I don't say native as no one is born speaking a language). In English, I sound Australian in Australia but in Scotland sound like a Scot. My Spanish accent is pretty good, Latinos say I sound like a person from Spain. People from Spain say I sound like a news reader. My Portuguese accent is a lot dicier because I have learnt it from more people from many different regions of Brazil. I believe I could clean it up. You could put all this down to moving around as a child but really I have simply just attempted very hard to imitate the sounds I am hearing and have refused to be satisfied with less than the phoneme I am hearing.
- stevezsa8 3y ago
  That's pretty cool, nice work learning the different languages. I guess if you moved around as a kid, you probably had to imitate language and behaviour to fit in.

lproven 3y ago

> I've learned languages in my 30's and see no reason why I couldn't continue to do so in the coming decades. I think you're giving your age away. I picked up basic German in 3 days of very hard work at age 20. It worked, I still remember it and it's still useful. In my early 30s I picked up basic Norwegian in about 6 weeks of light effort. I can still recall some of it and still communicate in it, very poorly. I also picked up a smattering of Spanish, Swedish and tiny amounts of Japanese without much effort in my teens and 20s. In my mid 40s, I started to learn Czech. After 3 years of effort, I was getting nowhere, so I started paying professional teachers. After 5 years of that, I just about struggled past level A2 (advanced beginner). Learning your first Slavic language in adulthood is brutally difficult. (New phonemes, vowel length as marker of minimal pairs, 4 genders + 7 cases + 2 plurals for all nouns + complex tense system including gendered verbs.) Takeaways: 1. Language acquisition gets much harder with age. 2. Learning languages closely related to your own feels hard but it's much easier. Learn something distantly linked or unrelated for a long drawn out sharp shock.