All of the the research I have seen on this topic have been observational retrospective studies, which are worthless and should be ignored. The confounders on the group of people who are able to learn a second language (let alone a third or more) are so large that they cannot be overcome without a randomized control. This stuff is churnalism, right up there with "does coffee make you live longer?" [1].
But, as someone who has now devoted a large portion of my life to becoming proficient at a second language, I do think there are benefits, even if they've never been proven. The most important of these, in my opinion, is just the social aspects of learning another language. You have to get out there and talk to people, and that's inherently healthy.
I do want to say that you hear loads of pessimism about whether or not it's possible a language after childhood, etc., but I'm here to tell you that not only is it possible, it's possible to do even if you suck at languages (as I do). The primary factor is motivation, and the second biggest factor is time. Find a language that you like, because you like the culture you'll be interacting with when you speak it. If you don't, you'll never find the impetus to keep going when it gets hard and boring.
[1] protip: drink coffee if you like it, and don't worry about it. Likewise, learn a language if you like it, not because some dumb article said it would make your neurons fluffier.
I am an actual linguist, in a subfield that requires me to continually learn new languages, and there are no social benefits. I definitely don't get out there. Once one is a man over the age of 40 or so, local people are rarely willing to talk to you at any length, you are not interesting any more (in fact, in some cultures, local people will have heightened suspicion of you). Language learning becomes more a passive endeavour with few opportunities for real-world speaking.
What? Come on. I’m on that demographic and have zero issues talking to people out in the world. If you believe this then certainly it’s true. Otherwise, just go meet and interact with people normally.
Maybe if you are near the native speaking country, or potentially if there are significant numbers of immigrants.
But knowing Spanish adds nothing social within New Zealand.
I had a Spanish girlfriend when 30, which made learning Spanish rather incentivised, and I embedded overseas for many months to learn conversational Spanish.
However I rarely hang out with South American immigrants in New Zealand, and those I have met (say at the pub) often prefer to stick with English.
Knowing Spanish is fantastic when travelling - the months spent learning have led to way more enjoyment when subsequently travelling to South America or visiting friends in Spain. Spanish also helps a little in France, Italy, Portugal and Brazil.
I intend to spend a few months in South Korea so maybe I'll try and learn Korean (without a girlfriend). However I'm now older so I suspect it will be much much harder.
Learning another language is difficult, but never occured to me to think it would be somehow impossible to anyone. It might be that having english as your native language puts you in a uniquely difficult position as it is the default international language. World is getting smaller and people coming from smaller languages usually also learn the local international language as well. If you are born to family speaking estonian today you probably pick up also english or otherwise you spend your life surfing only estonian websites. It requires no special talent (although some people are fast at picking up new languages)
> It might be that having english as your native language puts you in a uniquely difficult position
Personally I suspect English has some great advantages. The main disadvantage is defaulting to superiority.
The natural disconnect between written and spoken English is tremendously helpful. Well educated English encourages copying sounds - pronouncing foreign names and places correctly. This is a huge leg up compared against some other cultures. Think sports stars having their foreign names pronounced correctly. People often know how to try and say Paris or Barcelona correctly. We naturally know that how something is spoken trumps how it is written.
English speakers often have the ability to hear sounds because there's so many wildly different English accents. Especially vowels (we natively use a wide range of vowel sounds). There are sounds English speakers struggle to hear, but I think we have an advantage over some other languages.
If you're the type of person that attempts to mimic accents, then you've often learnt how to say a huge range of vowels and consonants. And how to stretch them (Strine, some US accents) or shorten them.
I don’t know where you’re from, but if you’re European (it sounds like it?), you probably take for granted the head start you get by knowing multiple languages from childhood. Every European I meet has a comfort with language learning that I can only approximate with great effort.
I agree with you about the disadvantage of being a native English speaker, but mostly I think the real disadvantage is being an American, and never having a reason to learn another language (though that has changed in my lifetime with Spanish, and possibly Mandarin).
In any case, a lot of academic researchers claim that it’s impossible to learn a language to a native level as an adult, which may be true, but that claim has been twisted into “impossible to learn a second language” by a lot of others.
This is phrased ambiguously, but most Europeans only start learning foreign languages in school, so around age 6 or later. By that time you're past the "critical window" and you'll almost surely have a very recognizable accent and learning the language is very effortful and takes many years. It's still probably easier to learn when you're 7 than when you're 40, but it's not even close to language acquisition as a toddler.
You're also forgetting that school-based language instruction is not so great at all. Imagine a class of 30 students having a 45 minute English class twice a week, by a non-native teacher with a heavy accent. It's not a lot of learning, very little speaking, and most kids unsurprisingly don't learn to speak well from that. It's mostly about memorizing grammar tables and vocabulary for tests.
You need much more intensive paid courses or private instruction if you really want to be good at it, even as a teenager. Not strictly necessary but learning purely from public school is usually not as effective as you seem to think. Or you have to be an outlier in diligence and do a LOT of homework practice on your own, translating, reading, writing, listening to media etc. Video games can be a great motivator but it also gives a very lopsided skillset and won't easily get you to pass a B2 or C1 exam.
And yes, it's true. For Americans learning a foreign language is an exotic hobby or a requirement of some very rare foreign-associated jobs. For people whose native language isn't English, learning English is just part of the basics for professional work. It's around the same level in basicness as getting an undergrad degree. Certainly not something that every single person does, and there are jobs you can do without it, but white collar, professional knowledge work will require it.
In most European countries you also have to learn a second foreign language at school at some point, though not as many years as the first foreign language. This one is usually the language of a big nearby European country, so German, French, Italian or Spanish are popular. But just as it is for Americans, learning this second, non-English foreign language is much less motivating once you know English. Though economic motivations do exist, for example to learn German, especially when you live close to the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) countries and there are many economic ties.
And it is only getting easier to learn a language now too. What FINALLY got me over the hump with Spanish was YouTube and discovering resources like Dreaming Spanish (leveled content for comprehensive input that probably exist in most major languages). Content that was fun and at my level.
Mix into that a weekly lesson with italki from your home and you can learn any language at any age.
There are so many tools now that didn't exist even when I started. I don't know how people managed without being able to use translation apps, for example. Or in the case of Japanese, being able to take a picture of text, and select the kanji for lookup. Life. Changing.
I'm also old enough to remember when getting listening materials required going to the library for cassette tapes. Today, you can talk with a wide selection of native speakers, listen to essentially infinite audio and video content, and immerse yourself in a culture halfway around the world for the price of an internet connection.
> I don't know how people managed without being able to use translation apps, for example.
I learned English with no Internet or smartphones, just school teachers, coursebooks and physical dictionaries. I wrote down new words from the dictionary into my lined notebook with a pen, solved the exercises from the book, translated texts by looking up words in the dictionary, searching for the page and the entry alphabetically. The coursebook came with an audio cassette. It was very much possible, but of course there are much more tools today. Spaced repetition software like Anki for vocabulary learning is a huge improvement I think.
Before Covid I got my German B1 certificate. I was diligently going to German-speaking meetup twice a week.
One of the meetups had a bunch of googlers in it regularly. One of them was a loud gregarious Italian from the north. He was telling me a story about cleaning fish and chopping their heads off with a machete and how he cut the end of his finger off and had it reattached. He seemed nice but a little inept and lacking caution.
Covid was starting. In the newspapers it was reported that Zurich had its first case of Covid. They were cautious to not say who it was - no clues at all in the paper. But a friend at Google forwarded me an internal email that said no one at Google had it yet other than someone in the Zurich office who had just been in northern Italy.
I stopped going to the meetups. I really should start again but not sure what's going to happen next.
That's not how viruses work. You're not magically immune to flu season just because you've gotten the flu (or flu vaccines) in past years. It's ALWAYS important to keep up to date on your booster vaccines for covid. Even getting one or multiple strains at home won't necessarily help when you travel either.
It actually is how the human immune system works, and in particular, there’s a huge amount of evidence that humoral immunity is protective and long lasting for Covid. Worrying about this is roughly the same degree of reasonable as worrying about getting any of the other common coronaviruses that circulate.
I know you’re not going to accept this, but there is quite literally no good evidence that boosters for Covid do anything for otherwise healthy people who have already been infected.
Regardless, the point is, if you won’t go to a language meetup because you’re worried about this, you’re likely doing far more damage to yourself from social isolation and anxiety than the virus would ever do to you. It’s time to live your life.
I think vaccinations and boosters reduced duration of illness when I got covid for the first time last year. I have no way to know though.
I think it's weird to advocate skipping shots (not explicitly, but implied) because "everyone's already been infected several times". Best to just get them even if you've been infected and then you don't have to care if they help or not. As opposed to not having gotten them if it comes out that they do help in any way.
Also that was the only time I've ever gotten sick from covid. I guess that according to you, I must've been asymptomatic several more times.
This is wildly off topic, but again, since you didn’t read it: there is no good evidence that the shots help you if you’ve already been infected. Not mortality, not symptoms, not transmission, nothing.
Get the shot if it makes you feel less anxious. It’s probably not helping you, but it’s not hurting you either.
I read your entire comment. I finished my reply before you made a couple of your latest edits, but I read those too and they don't change my answers. I feel like the assumption of bad faith here makes further debate fruitless.
In fact my second paragraph was directly addressing the claim that they don't help, so it's surprising you would so confidently assert I didn't read that part at all.
Anyone have experience learning a new language in their 30s? I've tried and failed a few times. I can't tell if the time constraints (family, work, life) or mental constraints are the bigger problem.
In my opinion it is necessity and immersion that drive language learning best.
If you don't actually need it it's hard to be disciplined enough to put the work in when there so many other calls on your time.
For me immersion is the only thing that really works. I can plug away at the grammar and vocab ad aeternam without making a den in the task but having to use the language to order a beer or food or talk to people who don't speak your language to get things done works much faster.
Yes. Started Japanese for the first time in my late 30s. I am currently around CEFR B1, working toward B2.
> I can't tell if the time constraints (family, work, life) or mental constraints are the bigger problem.
Almost certainly time, and/or motivation. I've met a few people who had mental blocks to learning, but for the most part, anyone who has the time to actually study can learn a language. The people I've met who failed weren't dumb...they just didn't work at it.
As the sibling notes, if you can immerse yourself, that's the best thing. I've personally known multiple people over age 30 who went from 0 to B1 in Japanese in a year of immersion. Add another year, and you can get to B2. Of course, that's obviously hard if you have a family, etc., but you can still succeed without it -- it just takes longer.
A friend learnt French and piano in her mid 30s and later. Then she went lazy as potato and pretty much is horrible at both. Never practised. Now she is in late 40s and rather spends time scrolling Twitter (yup!), Instagram, and Youtube or overworking. So, I seriously doubt the true brain capacity is the problem in 30s or later. She also had somewhat of a life in her 30s and then she never made an effort to keep having that life (something I am inching towards in my late 30s now; also in the geography we both are this is inherently difficult - no, it's not an excuse) and that also contributed to losing a lot of her personality, or that's how she puts it. So I think to use the brain the brain needs to be primed and well oiled et cetera.
I've done that with Russian, got around level B2 so far. But I had quite a bit of experience with language learning before that (mainly easy-ish languages: Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc).
Russian is tough nut to crack, and it does require above average dedication. As a matter of fact, I'm currently in Kyrgyzstan for a few weeks to get some immersion and hopefully break out of the level I'm currently in.
You'll need loads of time, but for some languages you really do need to find grammar interesting.
I have learned all of my Spanish since I turned 30?
If you’re immersed and just use anki to build out your vocab it isn’t that hard. Tbh, it’s kind of easier than when I was learning languages as a teen.
you need serious motivation to learn a new language. First ask yourself if you have a really good reason otherwise you will give up. I, for example learned english because I needed for work. But I wouldn't dive into learning another language unless I'm going to engage with it in some form every day
1. I learned enough vocabulary in a very short time to be able to more or less be able to read with the assistance of a dictionary on an e-book where you can click on a word. I spent ~2 weekends of Duolingo 8 hours a day, but I'd use flashcards in the future instead of that. It sounds a bit crazy in hindsight, but I feel like it was easier to stay strongly motivated for a short period of time than drizzling the words over a period of time. All other attempts where I did not do this, failed.
The limit of learning words for me is ~50-200 words per hour if using flashcards. It depends a lot on the language and how similar it is to the languages one already knows. 200, if it is similar to my native language, ~50, if I don't know anything similar at all. I'm also almost guaranteed to forget 80% of the words, if I don't use them in the next day or two, but its possible to cram a lot of them very fast and then move on to stage 2 to use them.
Important catch (for me at least), is that I can remember nouns far more easily than verbs or other more abstract/structural words. Those absolutely need to be in a sentence when learning. There's pretty much no point for me in trying to cram them on their own. I just cannot remember them in isolation at all and also which words they are used with differ per language anyway. Eg "to put" won't necessarily be used for all nouns in a different language even though a dictionary might say that's what it means. The good side is that knowing the nouns helps a lot in deciphering.
2. After the initial cramming I read a couple of short/simple books over some months in the evenings before sleep. I tried to listen to videos & to talk to some people a bit now and then, but it was extremely hard and boring as I understood too little. In hindsight I should have listened more to videos, but the good ones are surprisingly hard to find, if you don't live in the country that already speaks the language one is learning.
3. I tried several options for getting conversational after that. First a private teacher who knew the language well, but was not experienced enough (a university student) to teach somebody who tends to use weird methods for learning. She kept getting confused about why I understand complex words that were basically the same in English, Spanish and other European languages, but why I struggled with the basics when talking at the same time.
I also tried some learning groups. They were fine, but it's very difficult to find people at the same level after starting to learn a language and not following a preset path. I was felt either far ahead and far behind at the same time.
Eventually I found a native speaking private teacher who had years of experience. He could make the classes interesting and after ~1.5-2 years of talking with him 1-2 times per week for an hour about pretty much anything, I can hold a conversation and handle things in general. I still kept learning vocabulary in parallel and I'm not quite fluent as I don't use the language daily, but I'm not too far off either. Overall it took maybe 2-3 years, because I wasn't very consistent at the beginning.
If I were to change anything, it's getting the private teacher way sooner, skipping the learning groups entirely and using flash cards + asking for verbs/structural words as parts of sentences from either the private teacher or finding some other resource for it to start with. Using AI is possible too I guess for that purpose, but only with more common languages. Most AIs completely mess up my native language and invent words that don't exist, so I wouldn't trust them much when learning.
I did with what I consider a success. Basically, duolingo and then some beginner podcasts and then netflix with language reactor. I do understand pretty well, did not do much to speak - I dod not cared.
The key in our age is to NOT listen to pointifications about how you need to spend hours a day, are lazy if you dont grind flashcards or grammar.
My rule was "doing something every day 5 min counts" and focusing on what I actually liked. That way, it was not a burden. Maybe took longer, but I dont care.
I am trilingual. All of my languages belong to different language groups; I regularly read and write in both directions. I use all of the three languages every day. I can also bulldoze my way through a text in a fourth language given a dictionary and a reference for its grammar. I can read the alphabet of a fifth language (mostly w/o understanding the sounds that I make, but I am told that I get it right).
I got there 15 years ago. I seem to be unable to learn anything new since.
Good point about the different language groups. I wonder if there has been any research on measuring the scale of the effect by including some sort of distance metric between the languages. Let's imagine your primary language is Spanish: What's the gain if you learn Italian (Romance language) vs German (non-Romance Indo-European) vs Hungarian (non-Indo European same alphabet) vs Japanese (non-Indo European different alphabet)?
The biggest obstacle to learning a foreign language is that it's so much slower and more frustrating than using your native language, right? Compared to your native-language typing speed, even English typing speed is only half...
So it's really frustrating. how do you all relieve that frustration?
The frustration goes away with time. It's always going to be slightly more friction and that's worse when tired, etc, but the cost becomes less.
As someone who's done a second language to fluency past 30 years old, the largest hurdle IMO is the inverse frequency curve for words (not sure what the real term is).
But basically, the most common (and therefore most easy to pick up and learn) words carry the least amount of meaning. A, The, Where, Why, etc..
The most meaning-dense words are the least common, and therefore you learn them much slower when consuming native media.
It gets to the point where, if you learn a quarter of all the words in a language, you can read every word of most sentences except for one or two, and those 1-2 words carry all the meaning.
It's incredibly frustrating and the only way through is grinding vocabulary lists, as far as I know.
English native -> Norwegian C1 in ~ 5 years. The back half of any language learning is brutal, IMO. I had a huge dip where I stopped being able to absorb vocabulary via osmosis and consuming media, and just had to grind. But maybe that's just me.
It’s exceedingly frustrating, and you either get an awful lot of exposure ( say you stop reading in English , only read in Norwegian and read 10k pages a year ) or you grind and learn word lists.
The good news is that word lists are now much easier to learn thanks to SRS systems.
I think ultimately the highest barrier is looking stupid. I try not to care, like how kids do not and simply try. People underestimate you all the time when you do not speak a language, or do it badly.
You put yourself in a situation where nobody understands you in your native language, nothing helpful for your daily life is written in your native language, and you must constantly try to comprehend and produce the target language if you want to accomplish even basic tasks.
If you can't up and move, then studying a language with a lot of cultural export helps a bit, if you can get into the habit of switching all of your media consumption to the target language. It's not the same, though.
I watch and read different things. I like different things in foreign language - stuff that is simple or kind of cringy in my own. So I rarely ends up comparing it.
Second, I rewatch things I liked a lot. Watching them dubbed with more need to rewind makes me notice different stuff about series - how they are composed. So it is a bonus.
A second language, almost from the start, will also open up a whole second world for you.
When I go to somewhere that speaks Spanish the whole place “jumps into 3D” for me. I can understand what people at the table next to me are complaining or laughing about, I can make small talk with people, I don’t have to follow the “avocado toast” trail that the non-native speakers sort of get jammed into because they struggle off of it. It is a much more human experience when you understand the language.
At home, I can watch Spanish movies as well, and listen to music artists I probably might never have heard about like C. Tangana and Rosalia otherwise. It has doubled my cultural landscape for me.
After reading the article, I wonder if this isn’t a key secondary benefit to learning the language itself. It gives you a larger variety of things to enjoy in your life.
Note that languages can alternatively also be conlangs (constructed languages). They are in fact a lot more interesting and systematic than traditional human languages. Granted, you'll find no real-life people who verbally speak the conlang outside of arranged group calls within online communities.
You also get to learn another culture which to some extent prevents you from becoming an a.hole. Lack of foreign language instruction in k-12 education in the USA might be a little correlated with this...
probably if you don't program already, unlikely if you do, they are more similar than different once you know the three classes (imperative, functional, logical)
I suspect an amount of the same in human language, where learning french if you know spanish is less lift than learning a tonal language like mandarin
similar results from (eg.) learning music can be found, the underlying pattern seems to be learning things that are very very new to you, and challenge the brain, benefits the brain
>probably if you don't program already, unlikely if you do, they are more similar than different once you know the three classes (imperative, functional, logical)
I mean if it were that similarity made it not useful then it would surely be that you should only learn languages that are significantly different from ones you already know, but that does not seem to be the case from the admittedly not very detailed article.
>I suspect an amount of the same in human language, where learning french if you know spanish is less lift than learning a tonal language like mandarin
right, but they don't say that.
Maybe it is learning things different to you. But perhaps it is stimulating the parts of the brain that do the most relating of complicated concepts to each other. In which case it is just learning a bunch of words and what they refer to and how to structure these words together to discourse on ideas.
One common thing that is used to keep people from losing abilities in Alzheimer's diagnosis is using complicated skills like knitting, drawing. That is to say practicing complicated skills you already have prevents deterioration, so it seems reasonable to assume learning complicated skills does the same.
In which case it ends up being not very amazing information, as that is what I would naturally assume to be the case.
I don't think it's really possible to learn a new language unless you have to. Sure, you can learn some words and grammar from books and games like Duolingo, but you'll never really learn the language if you don't use it, and you'll only use it if you have to. This is why it's hard for English natives to learn another language: too many people speak our language already. And now people won't be learning computer languages any more either.
All of the the research I have seen on this topic have been observational retrospective studies, which are worthless and should be ignored. The confounders on the group of people who are able to learn a second language (let alone a third or more) are so large that they cannot be overcome without a randomized control. This stuff is churnalism, right up there with "does coffee make you live longer?" [1].
But, as someone who has now devoted a large portion of my life to becoming proficient at a second language, I do think there are benefits, even if they've never been proven. The most important of these, in my opinion, is just the social aspects of learning another language. You have to get out there and talk to people, and that's inherently healthy.
I do want to say that you hear loads of pessimism about whether or not it's possible a language after childhood, etc., but I'm here to tell you that not only is it possible, it's possible to do even if you suck at languages (as I do). The primary factor is motivation, and the second biggest factor is time. Find a language that you like, because you like the culture you'll be interacting with when you speak it. If you don't, you'll never find the impetus to keep going when it gets hard and boring.
[1] protip: drink coffee if you like it, and don't worry about it. Likewise, learn a language if you like it, not because some dumb article said it would make your neurons fluffier.
I am an actual linguist, in a subfield that requires me to continually learn new languages, and there are no social benefits. I definitely don't get out there. Once one is a man over the age of 40 or so, local people are rarely willing to talk to you at any length, you are not interesting any more (in fact, in some cultures, local people will have heightened suspicion of you). Language learning becomes more a passive endeavour with few opportunities for real-world speaking.
What? Come on. I’m on that demographic and have zero issues talking to people out in the world. If you believe this then certainly it’s true. Otherwise, just go meet and interact with people normally.
> social aspects of learning another language
Maybe if you are near the native speaking country, or potentially if there are significant numbers of immigrants.
But knowing Spanish adds nothing social within New Zealand.
I had a Spanish girlfriend when 30, which made learning Spanish rather incentivised, and I embedded overseas for many months to learn conversational Spanish.
However I rarely hang out with South American immigrants in New Zealand, and those I have met (say at the pub) often prefer to stick with English.
Knowing Spanish is fantastic when travelling - the months spent learning have led to way more enjoyment when subsequently travelling to South America or visiting friends in Spain. Spanish also helps a little in France, Italy, Portugal and Brazil.
I intend to spend a few months in South Korea so maybe I'll try and learn Korean (without a girlfriend). However I'm now older so I suspect it will be much much harder.
Learning another language is difficult, but never occured to me to think it would be somehow impossible to anyone. It might be that having english as your native language puts you in a uniquely difficult position as it is the default international language. World is getting smaller and people coming from smaller languages usually also learn the local international language as well. If you are born to family speaking estonian today you probably pick up also english or otherwise you spend your life surfing only estonian websites. It requires no special talent (although some people are fast at picking up new languages)
> It might be that having english as your native language puts you in a uniquely difficult position
Personally I suspect English has some great advantages. The main disadvantage is defaulting to superiority.
The natural disconnect between written and spoken English is tremendously helpful. Well educated English encourages copying sounds - pronouncing foreign names and places correctly. This is a huge leg up compared against some other cultures. Think sports stars having their foreign names pronounced correctly. People often know how to try and say Paris or Barcelona correctly. We naturally know that how something is spoken trumps how it is written.
English speakers often have the ability to hear sounds because there's so many wildly different English accents. Especially vowels (we natively use a wide range of vowel sounds). There are sounds English speakers struggle to hear, but I think we have an advantage over some other languages.
If you're the type of person that attempts to mimic accents, then you've often learnt how to say a huge range of vowels and consonants. And how to stretch them (Strine, some US accents) or shorten them.
I don’t know where you’re from, but if you’re European (it sounds like it?), you probably take for granted the head start you get by knowing multiple languages from childhood. Every European I meet has a comfort with language learning that I can only approximate with great effort.
I agree with you about the disadvantage of being a native English speaker, but mostly I think the real disadvantage is being an American, and never having a reason to learn another language (though that has changed in my lifetime with Spanish, and possibly Mandarin).
In any case, a lot of academic researchers claim that it’s impossible to learn a language to a native level as an adult, which may be true, but that claim has been twisted into “impossible to learn a second language” by a lot of others.
> knowing multiple languages from childhood
This is phrased ambiguously, but most Europeans only start learning foreign languages in school, so around age 6 or later. By that time you're past the "critical window" and you'll almost surely have a very recognizable accent and learning the language is very effortful and takes many years. It's still probably easier to learn when you're 7 than when you're 40, but it's not even close to language acquisition as a toddler.
You're also forgetting that school-based language instruction is not so great at all. Imagine a class of 30 students having a 45 minute English class twice a week, by a non-native teacher with a heavy accent. It's not a lot of learning, very little speaking, and most kids unsurprisingly don't learn to speak well from that. It's mostly about memorizing grammar tables and vocabulary for tests.
You need much more intensive paid courses or private instruction if you really want to be good at it, even as a teenager. Not strictly necessary but learning purely from public school is usually not as effective as you seem to think. Or you have to be an outlier in diligence and do a LOT of homework practice on your own, translating, reading, writing, listening to media etc. Video games can be a great motivator but it also gives a very lopsided skillset and won't easily get you to pass a B2 or C1 exam.
And yes, it's true. For Americans learning a foreign language is an exotic hobby or a requirement of some very rare foreign-associated jobs. For people whose native language isn't English, learning English is just part of the basics for professional work. It's around the same level in basicness as getting an undergrad degree. Certainly not something that every single person does, and there are jobs you can do without it, but white collar, professional knowledge work will require it.
In most European countries you also have to learn a second foreign language at school at some point, though not as many years as the first foreign language. This one is usually the language of a big nearby European country, so German, French, Italian or Spanish are popular. But just as it is for Americans, learning this second, non-English foreign language is much less motivating once you know English. Though economic motivations do exist, for example to learn German, especially when you live close to the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) countries and there are many economic ties.
And it is only getting easier to learn a language now too. What FINALLY got me over the hump with Spanish was YouTube and discovering resources like Dreaming Spanish (leveled content for comprehensive input that probably exist in most major languages). Content that was fun and at my level.
Mix into that a weekly lesson with italki from your home and you can learn any language at any age.
There are so many tools now that didn't exist even when I started. I don't know how people managed without being able to use translation apps, for example. Or in the case of Japanese, being able to take a picture of text, and select the kanji for lookup. Life. Changing.
I'm also old enough to remember when getting listening materials required going to the library for cassette tapes. Today, you can talk with a wide selection of native speakers, listen to essentially infinite audio and video content, and immerse yourself in a culture halfway around the world for the price of an internet connection.
> I don't know how people managed without being able to use translation apps, for example.
I learned English with no Internet or smartphones, just school teachers, coursebooks and physical dictionaries. I wrote down new words from the dictionary into my lined notebook with a pen, solved the exercises from the book, translated texts by looking up words in the dictionary, searching for the page and the entry alphabetically. The coursebook came with an audio cassette. It was very much possible, but of course there are much more tools today. Spaced repetition software like Anki for vocabulary learning is a huge improvement I think.
> The confounders on the group of people who are able to learn a second language
Unless you have large learning disorder, you can learn second language. It is not some kind of rare talent
Before Covid I got my German B1 certificate. I was diligently going to German-speaking meetup twice a week.
One of the meetups had a bunch of googlers in it regularly. One of them was a loud gregarious Italian from the north. He was telling me a story about cleaning fish and chopping their heads off with a machete and how he cut the end of his finger off and had it reattached. He seemed nice but a little inept and lacking caution.
Covid was starting. In the newspapers it was reported that Zurich had its first case of Covid. They were cautious to not say who it was - no clues at all in the paper. But a friend at Google forwarded me an internal email that said no one at Google had it yet other than someone in the Zurich office who had just been in northern Italy.
I stopped going to the meetups. I really should start again but not sure what's going to happen next.
Well, now that everyone has had it several times, including you, it’s probably safe to go to a language meetup.
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That's not how viruses work. You're not magically immune to flu season just because you've gotten the flu (or flu vaccines) in past years. It's ALWAYS important to keep up to date on your booster vaccines for covid. Even getting one or multiple strains at home won't necessarily help when you travel either.
It actually is how the human immune system works, and in particular, there’s a huge amount of evidence that humoral immunity is protective and long lasting for Covid. Worrying about this is roughly the same degree of reasonable as worrying about getting any of the other common coronaviruses that circulate.
I know you’re not going to accept this, but there is quite literally no good evidence that boosters for Covid do anything for otherwise healthy people who have already been infected.
Regardless, the point is, if you won’t go to a language meetup because you’re worried about this, you’re likely doing far more damage to yourself from social isolation and anxiety than the virus would ever do to you. It’s time to live your life.
I think vaccinations and boosters reduced duration of illness when I got covid for the first time last year. I have no way to know though.
I think it's weird to advocate skipping shots (not explicitly, but implied) because "everyone's already been infected several times". Best to just get them even if you've been infected and then you don't have to care if they help or not. As opposed to not having gotten them if it comes out that they do help in any way.
Also that was the only time I've ever gotten sick from covid. I guess that according to you, I must've been asymptomatic several more times.
This is wildly off topic, but again, since you didn’t read it: there is no good evidence that the shots help you if you’ve already been infected. Not mortality, not symptoms, not transmission, nothing.
Get the shot if it makes you feel less anxious. It’s probably not helping you, but it’s not hurting you either.
> since you didn’t read it
I read your entire comment. I finished my reply before you made a couple of your latest edits, but I read those too and they don't change my answers. I feel like the assumption of bad faith here makes further debate fruitless.
In fact my second paragraph was directly addressing the claim that they don't help, so it's surprising you would so confidently assert I didn't read that part at all.
There’s nothing in bad faith here. I’m telling you the truth as I know it, based on a wide reading of the literature.
Your second paragraph did not “directly address the claim” - you just restated an opinion that you should do something whether it helps or not.
That’s not how science works, but sure, if you feel that way, it probably doesn’t matter one way oe the other.
My original point was one about social isolation, so I’m really done talking about this now.
Anyone have experience learning a new language in their 30s? I've tried and failed a few times. I can't tell if the time constraints (family, work, life) or mental constraints are the bigger problem.
In my opinion it is necessity and immersion that drive language learning best.
If you don't actually need it it's hard to be disciplined enough to put the work in when there so many other calls on your time.
For me immersion is the only thing that really works. I can plug away at the grammar and vocab ad aeternam without making a den in the task but having to use the language to order a beer or food or talk to people who don't speak your language to get things done works much faster.
Yes. Started Japanese for the first time in my late 30s. I am currently around CEFR B1, working toward B2.
> I can't tell if the time constraints (family, work, life) or mental constraints are the bigger problem.
Almost certainly time, and/or motivation. I've met a few people who had mental blocks to learning, but for the most part, anyone who has the time to actually study can learn a language. The people I've met who failed weren't dumb...they just didn't work at it.
As the sibling notes, if you can immerse yourself, that's the best thing. I've personally known multiple people over age 30 who went from 0 to B1 in Japanese in a year of immersion. Add another year, and you can get to B2. Of course, that's obviously hard if you have a family, etc., but you can still succeed without it -- it just takes longer.
A friend learnt French and piano in her mid 30s and later. Then she went lazy as potato and pretty much is horrible at both. Never practised. Now she is in late 40s and rather spends time scrolling Twitter (yup!), Instagram, and Youtube or overworking. So, I seriously doubt the true brain capacity is the problem in 30s or later. She also had somewhat of a life in her 30s and then she never made an effort to keep having that life (something I am inching towards in my late 30s now; also in the geography we both are this is inherently difficult - no, it's not an excuse) and that also contributed to losing a lot of her personality, or that's how she puts it. So I think to use the brain the brain needs to be primed and well oiled et cetera.
Is she depressed? Laziness can be untreated depression sometimes
Pretty sure she is. She even suspects it. Even I do, for myself, but two psychiatrists cleared me so I stopped bothering.
I've done that with Russian, got around level B2 so far. But I had quite a bit of experience with language learning before that (mainly easy-ish languages: Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc).
Russian is tough nut to crack, and it does require above average dedication. As a matter of fact, I'm currently in Kyrgyzstan for a few weeks to get some immersion and hopefully break out of the level I'm currently in.
You'll need loads of time, but for some languages you really do need to find grammar interesting.
I have learned all of my Spanish since I turned 30?
If you’re immersed and just use anki to build out your vocab it isn’t that hard. Tbh, it’s kind of easier than when I was learning languages as a teen.
you need serious motivation to learn a new language. First ask yourself if you have a really good reason otherwise you will give up. I, for example learned english because I needed for work. But I wouldn't dive into learning another language unless I'm going to engage with it in some form every day
Yep, I learned Spanish, then French.
The trick is to immerse yourself. I spent 2 years in Latin America, then one in west Africa. If I wanted to talk to people, I simply had to learn.
Previously thought my engineer brain couldn’t do it.
Yes, it's possible. For me it went like this.
1. I learned enough vocabulary in a very short time to be able to more or less be able to read with the assistance of a dictionary on an e-book where you can click on a word. I spent ~2 weekends of Duolingo 8 hours a day, but I'd use flashcards in the future instead of that. It sounds a bit crazy in hindsight, but I feel like it was easier to stay strongly motivated for a short period of time than drizzling the words over a period of time. All other attempts where I did not do this, failed.
The limit of learning words for me is ~50-200 words per hour if using flashcards. It depends a lot on the language and how similar it is to the languages one already knows. 200, if it is similar to my native language, ~50, if I don't know anything similar at all. I'm also almost guaranteed to forget 80% of the words, if I don't use them in the next day or two, but its possible to cram a lot of them very fast and then move on to stage 2 to use them.
Important catch (for me at least), is that I can remember nouns far more easily than verbs or other more abstract/structural words. Those absolutely need to be in a sentence when learning. There's pretty much no point for me in trying to cram them on their own. I just cannot remember them in isolation at all and also which words they are used with differ per language anyway. Eg "to put" won't necessarily be used for all nouns in a different language even though a dictionary might say that's what it means. The good side is that knowing the nouns helps a lot in deciphering.
2. After the initial cramming I read a couple of short/simple books over some months in the evenings before sleep. I tried to listen to videos & to talk to some people a bit now and then, but it was extremely hard and boring as I understood too little. In hindsight I should have listened more to videos, but the good ones are surprisingly hard to find, if you don't live in the country that already speaks the language one is learning.
3. I tried several options for getting conversational after that. First a private teacher who knew the language well, but was not experienced enough (a university student) to teach somebody who tends to use weird methods for learning. She kept getting confused about why I understand complex words that were basically the same in English, Spanish and other European languages, but why I struggled with the basics when talking at the same time.
I also tried some learning groups. They were fine, but it's very difficult to find people at the same level after starting to learn a language and not following a preset path. I was felt either far ahead and far behind at the same time.
Eventually I found a native speaking private teacher who had years of experience. He could make the classes interesting and after ~1.5-2 years of talking with him 1-2 times per week for an hour about pretty much anything, I can hold a conversation and handle things in general. I still kept learning vocabulary in parallel and I'm not quite fluent as I don't use the language daily, but I'm not too far off either. Overall it took maybe 2-3 years, because I wasn't very consistent at the beginning.
If I were to change anything, it's getting the private teacher way sooner, skipping the learning groups entirely and using flash cards + asking for verbs/structural words as parts of sentences from either the private teacher or finding some other resource for it to start with. Using AI is possible too I guess for that purpose, but only with more common languages. Most AIs completely mess up my native language and invent words that don't exist, so I wouldn't trust them much when learning.
I did with what I consider a success. Basically, duolingo and then some beginner podcasts and then netflix with language reactor. I do understand pretty well, did not do much to speak - I dod not cared.
The key in our age is to NOT listen to pointifications about how you need to spend hours a day, are lazy if you dont grind flashcards or grammar.
My rule was "doing something every day 5 min counts" and focusing on what I actually liked. That way, it was not a burden. Maybe took longer, but I dont care.
I am trilingual. All of my languages belong to different language groups; I regularly read and write in both directions. I use all of the three languages every day. I can also bulldoze my way through a text in a fourth language given a dictionary and a reference for its grammar. I can read the alphabet of a fifth language (mostly w/o understanding the sounds that I make, but I am told that I get it right).
I got there 15 years ago. I seem to be unable to learn anything new since.
Good point about the different language groups. I wonder if there has been any research on measuring the scale of the effect by including some sort of distance metric between the languages. Let's imagine your primary language is Spanish: What's the gain if you learn Italian (Romance language) vs German (non-Romance Indo-European) vs Hungarian (non-Indo European same alphabet) vs Japanese (non-Indo European different alphabet)?
These researchers probably forgot to factor in the brain's disk size bottleneck. Maybe they will get there.
I thought it is about programming languages
I do think that practicing different programming languages should have a corresponding brain benefit as well.
The only solid thing I’ve seen for brain health is maintaining physical health
The biggest obstacle to learning a foreign language is that it's so much slower and more frustrating than using your native language, right? Compared to your native-language typing speed, even English typing speed is only half...
So it's really frustrating. how do you all relieve that frustration?
The frustration goes away with time. It's always going to be slightly more friction and that's worse when tired, etc, but the cost becomes less.
As someone who's done a second language to fluency past 30 years old, the largest hurdle IMO is the inverse frequency curve for words (not sure what the real term is).
But basically, the most common (and therefore most easy to pick up and learn) words carry the least amount of meaning. A, The, Where, Why, etc..
The most meaning-dense words are the least common, and therefore you learn them much slower when consuming native media.
It gets to the point where, if you learn a quarter of all the words in a language, you can read every word of most sentences except for one or two, and those 1-2 words carry all the meaning.
It's incredibly frustrating and the only way through is grinding vocabulary lists, as far as I know.
English native -> Norwegian C1 in ~ 5 years. The back half of any language learning is brutal, IMO. I had a huge dip where I stopped being able to absorb vocabulary via osmosis and consuming media, and just had to grind. But maybe that's just me.
No that’s correct, I fully agree.
It’s exceedingly frustrating, and you either get an awful lot of exposure ( say you stop reading in English , only read in Norwegian and read 10k pages a year ) or you grind and learn word lists.
The good news is that word lists are now much easier to learn thanks to SRS systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law may be what you're looking for
Thanks for the advice.
For me, reading is fine, but writing and speaking are hard. Especially speaking. What should I do about this?
Should I change my environment first, after all?
I think ultimately the highest barrier is looking stupid. I try not to care, like how kids do not and simply try. People underestimate you all the time when you do not speak a language, or do it badly.
Immersion, unfortunately.
You put yourself in a situation where nobody understands you in your native language, nothing helpful for your daily life is written in your native language, and you must constantly try to comprehend and produce the target language if you want to accomplish even basic tasks.
If you can't up and move, then studying a language with a lot of cultural export helps a bit, if you can get into the habit of switching all of your media consumption to the target language. It's not the same, though.
I guess that's the only way. Thanks for the advice.
I watch and read different things. I like different things in foreign language - stuff that is simple or kind of cringy in my own. So I rarely ends up comparing it.
Second, I rewatch things I liked a lot. Watching them dubbed with more need to rewind makes me notice different stuff about series - how they are composed. So it is a bonus.
Go somewhere you are forced to learn and speak it.
Defaulting to your native language will get zero comprehension, which is much more frustrating than some.
I had a massive stroke. I should be in a wheelchair. I'm mostly fine now.
It's postulated that my multilingual abilities helped, among other things.
A second language, almost from the start, will also open up a whole second world for you.
When I go to somewhere that speaks Spanish the whole place “jumps into 3D” for me. I can understand what people at the table next to me are complaining or laughing about, I can make small talk with people, I don’t have to follow the “avocado toast” trail that the non-native speakers sort of get jammed into because they struggle off of it. It is a much more human experience when you understand the language.
At home, I can watch Spanish movies as well, and listen to music artists I probably might never have heard about like C. Tangana and Rosalia otherwise. It has doubled my cultural landscape for me.
After reading the article, I wonder if this isn’t a key secondary benefit to learning the language itself. It gives you a larger variety of things to enjoy in your life.
Note that languages can alternatively also be conlangs (constructed languages). They are in fact a lot more interesting and systematic than traditional human languages. Granted, you'll find no real-life people who verbally speak the conlang outside of arranged group calls within online communities.
Learning Lean 4 and trying to prove something using it is extremely mentally stimulating.
You also get to learn another culture which to some extent prevents you from becoming an a.hole. Lack of foreign language instruction in k-12 education in the USA might be a little correlated with this...
does this include programming languages which after all are a system of meaning?
Also wondering about instruments and learning to read sheet music.
probably if you don't program already, unlikely if you do, they are more similar than different once you know the three classes (imperative, functional, logical)
I suspect an amount of the same in human language, where learning french if you know spanish is less lift than learning a tonal language like mandarin
similar results from (eg.) learning music can be found, the underlying pattern seems to be learning things that are very very new to you, and challenge the brain, benefits the brain
>probably if you don't program already, unlikely if you do, they are more similar than different once you know the three classes (imperative, functional, logical)
I mean if it were that similarity made it not useful then it would surely be that you should only learn languages that are significantly different from ones you already know, but that does not seem to be the case from the admittedly not very detailed article.
>I suspect an amount of the same in human language, where learning french if you know spanish is less lift than learning a tonal language like mandarin
right, but they don't say that.
Maybe it is learning things different to you. But perhaps it is stimulating the parts of the brain that do the most relating of complicated concepts to each other. In which case it is just learning a bunch of words and what they refer to and how to structure these words together to discourse on ideas.
One common thing that is used to keep people from losing abilities in Alzheimer's diagnosis is using complicated skills like knitting, drawing. That is to say practicing complicated skills you already have prevents deterioration, so it seems reasonable to assume learning complicated skills does the same.
In which case it ends up being not very amazing information, as that is what I would naturally assume to be the case.
Use it or lose it.
Do programming languages count?
Is a programming language a language?
I think it probably exercises some of the same cognitive skills, but the vocabulary of a typical programming language is tiny.
I don't think it's really possible to learn a new language unless you have to. Sure, you can learn some words and grammar from books and games like Duolingo, but you'll never really learn the language if you don't use it, and you'll only use it if you have to. This is why it's hard for English natives to learn another language: too many people speak our language already. And now people won't be learning computer languages any more either.