Language learning becomes easier for the person who tries a few different languages, and for the person who formally studies linguistics, and for the person inj

Language learning becomes easier for the person who tries a few different languages, and for the person who formally studies linguistics, and for the person injected into an environment where the target language is pervasive. But somehow there is still individual variance in how rapidly and thoroughly language-learners learn in otherwise identical environments, so it is worthwhile for the United States government and other organizations to spot the learners most likely to be successful. For Hacker News readers who have to learn a natural language (for example, English) whether it is easy or not, I suggest referring to a set of language-learning tips posted 231 days ago as a Hacker News comment[1] back in the thread about Paul Graham's article "Founders' Accents." My tips refer to several issues for language-learners who desire to be understood by native speakers of their target language for business or for pleasure, based on academic research and my personal experience as a translator and interpreter. I look forward to taking this test. (My background in learning languages other than my native language, General American English, is disclosed in my user profile.) I missed one chance to take an earlier general language-learning aptitude test in one previous employment setting because I was exempted from the test, having already demonstrated proficiency as a second-language learner of Modern Standard Chinese. But it would be fun to find out what this test says about my "natural" level of ability to learn a language ("baseline" would be a better adjective) after years of studying various languages. I agree with comments posted earlier here that sometimes each new language attempted becomes easier than the previous foreign languages attempted. The first foreign language I was ever taught was German (it was mandatory for all elementary school pupils in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade in my school district in Minnesota, very unusual for the United States). German is also a heritage language in my family (German-Americans are a bare majority of my ancestors), so I was happy to keep learning it as an elective subject in junior high school and senior high school, with some interruptions caused by a move to another state with a school district where German wasn't available as a junior high language (even though that state, Wisconsin, has a higher percentage of German-descended persons than any other state in the United States). In the years since, I took Russian as a high school and university subject, and ended up majoring in university in Chinese. Today I can comfortably read a book on a familiar nonfiction subject in German, but I am much better at speaking and understanding Chinese than German. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302816