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Learning Language at 14 vs 20 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| languagefreak Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5247 days ago 51 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: Russian, English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 55 23 March 2011 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
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How much harder is it to learn a language when you are 20 than when you are 14? 14 may seem like a strange
number but I chose it for a personal reason. Is it much harder for a 20 year old to learn a language than when he or she was around 14? Could a person learn that same language just as well at 20? Would their accent and all be any worse? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6357 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 55 23 March 2011 at 10:51am | IP Logged |
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On this forum, there is occasionally a "Learn-as-a-Child-Does Syndrome" battle.
Lots believe that younger children are forming all kinds of brain passageways based on the language sounds that they hear, which stops at a later age, usually defined around puberty. Others say that's nonsense. Most agree that commercial language courses that try to imply in their advertising that you'll "learn as a child does," are full of it, and are just trying to make their course sound effortless. At work a long time ago, there was a native Italian guy in our department who had a very heavy Italian accent when speaking. Somebody once went to visit him, and said they met his younger brother, and that it was funny that although he looked just like Alfredo, he spoke English with no discernable accent at all. Turns out, when they both came to live in the U.S. as school kids, the younger one (sorry, I don't remember their age difference or ages at the time) obviously hadn't hit the proverbial language-learning (or at least, the accent-learning) barrier. Others on here have told similar stories. Anyway, most of us agree that nobody should use "I'm too old to learn a new language" as an excuse, and that people can become fluent and speak with an authentic accent at any age...via a lot of effort, or by using Rosetta Stone, whichever is more difficult. ;-) Edited by TerryW on 23 March 2011 at 11:06am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 3 of 55 23 March 2011 at 12:43pm | IP Logged |
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Personally I started learning languages when I was 24 and I believe that starting at this age had a negative impact on my accent in foreign languages, it was the thing I struggled with for the longest and still struggle with to some extent despite lots of effort at improving.
I think my 24 years of solely English language programming also had a negative impact as it took me a lot of work to reprogram my brain to the way of thinking involved in Czech for example. So the difference is that it takes a lot more work to retrain your brain if you've never been exposed to foreign languages before your 20's. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6124 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 55 23 March 2011 at 1:02pm | IP Logged |
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It's definitely better to start learning a language at 14 than at 20.
Why? Because you're 6 years further ahead. ;-) 15 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 55 23 March 2011 at 1:20pm | IP Logged |
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When I was a kid my mother was told that if you want to learn a language really well, you need to start before your are 15, which is why she sent me to Spain when I was 11 and France when I was 14. I have not been able to learn other languages as well, or with as good an accent as those two first ones. However I can not say for sure whether that is due to the fact that I started learning them at an early age, or because I spent a lot of time and effort on those two, studying them also at the university, whereas my other languages have been more of a hobby.
If I were to reproduce the situation which gave me my Spanish, and do the same for let's say Russian,I would have to abandon my husband and children, go and live in Russian families for three years,becoming a member of their family, having only Russian friends, spending all my time learning Russian, study Russian at the university for almost 5 years and have 8 Russian boyfriends. I do not know whether my accent would be flawless, or that I would sound native, but I feel pretty confident that my Russian would get quite good. It is possible that you cannot get a native accent if you start learning at 20, but given enough time and effort, you can get pretty close. Besides, although my goal always is to get as good as possible, I would definitely settle for speaking good Russian, even with a Norwegian accent. We should not let the best become the enemy of good. You can learn a language at any age, it just takes a little bit more time. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 55 23 March 2011 at 4:12pm | IP Logged |
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The ability of a 14 year-old to learn through immersion *may* be higher, were it not only for the fact that they have no job or family and lots of time, but in terms of deliberately studying and learning a language, personally, when I was 20, I felt that I could learn any language faster than any 14 year-old kid.
I still do and I'm 36. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| montobello Newbie United States Joined 4997 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 55 23 March 2011 at 4:12pm | IP Logged |
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I think the biggest issue at 14 vs 20 is your free time. At 14 you likely are still in
school, and maybe even have the chance for a set time of foreign language study in your classes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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