4 ms·

Finnish or not, it is orders of magnitude harder to learn any language as an adult.

keerthiko 1y ago
IMO the hardest parts of learning a new language as an adult is a) convincing yourself its worth the effort: almost every time an adult runs into a confusing element of a new language, they find themselves calculating how many people in the world speak this language, probability they don't speak english and likelihood of running into this person and circumstance, and it's easy to justify giving up and moving on b) avoiding forcing it into the framework of your first language: if you have one distinctly favored language already, it's very hard not to try shove the new language you are learning into the former's mold, and this can be counterproductive in learning most languages that don't share an ancestor with your favored one. a) is greatly mitigated by forcing yourself to be in said context by living in a place prioritizing that language. b) is greatly mitigated by already being bilingual+ with languages from distinct origins (eg: mandarin chinese and english) before learning a new one, so you can place the new language on a spectrum with the ones you already know instead of confined by the rules of just one.
- mrsvanwinkle 1y ago
  longtime lurker first time account maker. i wouldnt say this was the first time i was tempted to express what felt to me as due acknowledgment nor was this the most compelling, but personal circumstances aligned with the what is apparently a "universal" (as far as human cognition is phenomenologically similar at least among a normal cluster) applicability of your observation on learning as we age, specifically the transactional social/market value of investing one's remaining lifetime. i especially loved the quasiglobal (euro.. swiss euro your emphasis) scope of the swiss school polyglot generator, definitely captured a sense of immensity in your narration (at least to me who understands how one language i dont know is a huge chunk of a known universe i am blind to) so ye anyway thanks, your post was a welcome dose of motivation to learn something complex yet relatively inane but ultimately disproportionately interesting tonight guiltfree not necessarily a new language but something i can brute clone in a childlike brain without the overhead of integrating it with the collective garbage ive recorded of my pov of the history of the universe so far. (i wish)
DontchaKnowit 1y ago
I think this is literally just a function of time and exposure oppirtunity and nothing else. An adult studying a language is spending like maybe 1% of the time studying that a child learning a language spends.
- mastazi 1y ago
  I get your point about time availability. This however doesn't explain why it's common for young adults to learn faster than older adults. Often young adults are even more time constrained than older generations (new family, young kids, possibly less stable job situation, etc.) and yet older adults are usually the ones who have a harder time learning a language (as a "serial" migrant I have experienced this personally). So I don't think that time is the only factor.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  No, brain plasticity is real. Even people who move to another country as adults and spend 100% of their time speaking that country’s language almost never learn to speak it with native-level intuition and a native-sounding accent (though they can reach pretty high levels). Children do, without even trying.
  - rf15 1y ago
    I feel you are both having very similar views, just your somewhat bad-faith interpretation of their words makes this unnecessarily complicated: the person you are responding to is probably largely talking about those who "don't even try", while you are talking about the thin margins towards perfection.
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      I really can’t understand how you think we’re saying the same thing. He’s saying age doesn’t intrinsically matter and I’m saying it does.
      - Tor3 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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adrian_b 1y ago
If you have learned a few languages when young, learning another language as an adult is much easier.
- jjav 1y ago
  Learning a new language as an adult is brutally hard. I spoke four languages by elementary school, including learning a new one (portuguese) in fifth grade. It was all seamless, zero effort, perfect local accent. So I have plenty of language background. I've spent almost 20 years now as an adult trying to learn french and find it impossible. Still speak it at a 2-year old level, at best. I have constant daily exposure to french, it's just an impossible language. Or that learning a new language as an adult it impossible.
Tor3 1y ago
Well.. I didn't really get proficient in English until I was in my thirties. I learned another language around that time as well, though not to full fluency (only because the option of continuing went away). And absorbing and understanding of German too.. The actual point is only that I remember how it felt - how listening and other kind of input molded my brain, relatively quickly (and sounds and words started echoing around in my brain). Now, thirty years later, it feels like my brain is much stiffer and everything takes much longer, when it comes to injecting a language (fortunately everything else still works as it should). So, 'adult' isn't really right in my opinion / experience - I know many people who were adults and could absorb another language relatively easily. What seems to happen is that it does change for the worse as the decades go by. But it's not as simple as adult vs child. And it's not by orders of magnitude in any case, it's more linear than that.

IMO the hardest parts of learning a new language as an adult is a) convincing yourself its worth the effort: almost every time an adult runs into a confusing element of a new language, they find themselves calculating how many people in the world speak this language, probability they don't speak english and likelihood of running into this person and circumstance, and it's easy to justify giving up and moving on b) avoiding forcing it into the framework of your first language: if you have one distinctly favored language already, it's very hard not to try shove the new language you are learning into the former's mold, and this can be counterproductive in learning most languages that don't share an ancestor with your favored one. a) is greatly mitigated by forcing yourself to be in said context by living in a place prioritizing that language. b) is greatly mitigated by already being bilingual+ with languages from distinct origins (eg: mandarin chinese and english) before learning a new one, so you can place the new language on a spectrum with the ones you already know instead of confined by the rules of just one.

mrsvanwinkle 1y ago
longtime lurker first time account maker. i wouldnt say this was the first time i was tempted to express what felt to me as due acknowledgment nor was this the most compelling, but personal circumstances aligned with the what is apparently a "universal" (as far as human cognition is phenomenologically similar at least among a normal cluster) applicability of your observation on learning as we age, specifically the transactional social/market value of investing one's remaining lifetime. i especially loved the quasiglobal (euro.. swiss euro your emphasis) scope of the swiss school polyglot generator, definitely captured a sense of immensity in your narration (at least to me who understands how one language i dont know is a huge chunk of a known universe i am blind to) so ye anyway thanks, your post was a welcome dose of motivation to learn something complex yet relatively inane but ultimately disproportionately interesting tonight guiltfree not necessarily a new language but something i can brute clone in a childlike brain without the overhead of integrating it with the collective garbage ive recorded of my pov of the history of the universe so far. (i wish)

DontchaKnowit 1y ago

I think this is literally just a function of time and exposure oppirtunity and nothing else. An adult studying a language is spending like maybe 1% of the time studying that a child learning a language spends.

mastazi 1y ago
I get your point about time availability. This however doesn't explain why it's common for young adults to learn faster than older adults. Often young adults are even more time constrained than older generations (new family, young kids, possibly less stable job situation, etc.) and yet older adults are usually the ones who have a harder time learning a language (as a "serial" migrant I have experienced this personally). So I don't think that time is the only factor.
School-Cotton 1y ago
No, brain plasticity is real. Even people who move to another country as adults and spend 100% of their time speaking that country’s language almost never learn to speak it with native-level intuition and a native-sounding accent (though they can reach pretty high levels). Children do, without even trying.
- rf15 1y ago
  I feel you are both having very similar views, just your somewhat bad-faith interpretation of their words makes this unnecessarily complicated: the person you are responding to is probably largely talking about those who "don't even try", while you are talking about the thin margins towards perfection.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    I really can’t understand how you think we’re saying the same thing. He’s saying age doesn’t intrinsically matter and I’m saying it does.
    - Tor3 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

adrian_b 1y ago

If you have learned a few languages when young, learning another language as an adult is much easier.

jjav 1y ago
Learning a new language as an adult is brutally hard. I spoke four languages by elementary school, including learning a new one (portuguese) in fifth grade. It was all seamless, zero effort, perfect local accent. So I have plenty of language background. I've spent almost 20 years now as an adult trying to learn french and find it impossible. Still speak it at a 2-year old level, at best. I have constant daily exposure to french, it's just an impossible language. Or that learning a new language as an adult it impossible.

Tor3 1y ago

Well.. I didn't really get proficient in English until I was in my thirties. I learned another language around that time as well, though not to full fluency (only because the option of continuing went away). And absorbing and understanding of German too.. The actual point is only that I remember how it felt - how listening and other kind of input molded my brain, relatively quickly (and sounds and words started echoing around in my brain). Now, thirty years later, it feels like my brain is much stiffer and everything takes much longer, when it comes to injecting a language (fortunately everything else still works as it should). So, 'adult' isn't really right in my opinion / experience - I know many people who were adults and could absorb another language relatively easily. What seems to happen is that it does change for the worse as the decades go by. But it's not as simple as adult vs child. And it's not by orders of magnitude in any case, it's more linear than that.