[dheera]

Personally, I don't think that is the primary reason adults have a hard time learning languages. Neural plasticity isn't the biggest reason either, IMO.

Rather, the biggest showstopper is that adults tend to always be busy, and fall back to their native languages to get the busy stuff done, and only end up practicing their new language during positive interactions when they have time. Which is really only a very small fraction of their life.

For example, I routinely see people in cross-cultural relationships try to learn each others' languages but fail miserably at learning when they get into disagreements and have that disagreement in English instead of the language either person is trying to learn. And thus, they don't learn. In order to truly learn a language to native fluency you need to be forced to use it for every common life situation, not just the occasional positive interactions. Children are more or less forced to be using the new language 100% of the time.

[domenicd]

+1.

It seems like it would be a lot easier to learn a second language if you were:

- Surrounded by 1-2 people whose full-time job was to take care of you, and who could only communicate with you in that second language

- Unable to do basic things by yourself without communicating those needs to your caretakers

- Unable to entertain yourself with any material written or spoken in your first language

- Somehow deprived of the ability to form verbal thoughts in your first language

Immersion gives a very weak version of this, e.g. if all the signage or menus you read are in the second language, and if you engage with service industry folks in your second language. You can make it better by trying to restrict your entertainment material to the second language, but this usually involves seeking out kids' shows to try to find something comprehensible at your small vocabulary level, and to me it ends up feeling more like work than entertainment.

[dheera]

> Immersion gives a very weak version of this

Agreed. Many adults attempt immersion by e.g. moving to a place where the language is spoken but then set themselves up in an expat bubble, which is roughly equivalent to wrapping a sponge in plastic and then immersing it in water.

In order to truly immerse yourself you need to actually need to have a life, friends, coworkers in that language, and the things that occupy your mental energy for 80% of the day (probably work, but in the case of children, schoolwork and homework) need to also be in that language.

Adults also often get "homesick" and create those expat bubbles for themselves to have a piece of home. Understandable, but children don't get homesick in the same way -- they didn't have any prior culture to think back to, and they don't have a concrete sense of self-identity until later in their childhood.

In many cases one may find that the locals actually are a force against immersion if their English is better than your knowledge of their language. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem but I do feel the right time for adult immersion should probably be after you've surpassed the local average English level, which then turns the local language into the preferred working language. If you haven't gotten there yet, you may find that you move, and then everyone wants to use English with you because time is money (and in some cases they want to practice their English, but less so in the workplace). And then -- you don't learn.

Children are at a huge advantage here, because schools mandate a certain language be used regardless of who knows what other languages to what level.

[ss3000]

> You can make it better by trying to restrict your entertainment material to the second language, but this usually involves seeking out kids' shows to try to find something comprehensible at your small vocabulary level, and to me it ends up feeling more like work than entertainment.

I suspect I'm probably not alone in this given how popular Japanese anime/games/manga/lightnovels are among non-native speakers, but outside of 1 year of Japanese class in high school where I was taught some fundamentals (could probably be replicated in a 1-month online course), I managed to acquire, pretty much exclusively through media consumption, enough proficiency to consume most Japanese entertainment I'm interested in today, rarely ever feeling the need to reach for translation (watching untranslated anime, reading untranslated manga/light novels, playing untranslated games, etc). In fact today I actually find translated material extremely frustrating and actively seek out non-localized Japanese versions of games to play so I can enjoy the original text.

Though of course I can't really claim to be a fluent communicator in Japanese because consuming media passively doesn't really exercise the brain and face muscles needed to communicate to others. When I went to Japan last year I was actually able to understand pretty much everything that was said to me, but really struggled to formulate responses (luckily I was able to eventually communicate my ideas for the most part, but I'm pretty sure it was dead obvious that I wasn't a native speaker). Writing in Japanese without some kind of IME is as you might guess a complete non-starter for me as well for similar reasons.

[domenicd]

I would love to hear more about how you did this. I've been doing serious, but slow-paced, Japanese studying for the last few years (I've got my N3 certificate; know ~1500 kanji; etc.) but media consumption still feels like a chore.

In particular:

* Most anime leaves me behind. If English subtitles are on, ~80% of the time I can say "oh yeah, that does match what they said". If Japanese subtitles are on, I can't read fast enough. If no subtitles are on, I get confused when sentences get long, involve lots of proper nouns, or just too much unfamiliar vocabulary.

* Reading feels like a chore. I have to look up a word every sentence or three, and longer sentences can get me twisted up on the grammar, wherein I resort to Google-translating the whole sentence or reading the corresponding English translation if available. So it feels like just a very roundabout way of reading the material. I try to mitigate this by adding the words to an SRS deck, but that just increases the feeling of it being a chore.

Any tips from your experience would be much appreciated.

[ss3000]

To set expectations, it's been more than 10 years since I started learning, so I don't want to make it sound like it was an easy/short process for me either.

But regardless, here's a few notes from my experience that might/might not help:

I'd recommend starting out by consuming untranslated material only for titles that you can enjoy without actually fully understanding every piece of dialog/text, and being at peace with the fact that you might not have understood everything, as long as the experience of consuming the content was still enjoyable. Light-hearted slice of life comedies and titles that involve mostly mindless action can be good candidates (you can give the first episodes/chapters of every new title a try without translations to see how it goes). For everything else, definitely keep using translations.

Number one priority should always be to enjoy the content. If you're like me then that's what motivated you to learn in the first place, to enjoy the content more, so be sure to not confuse the end goal with the means you're using to get there.

Slowly, over periods of years, as you watch/read more titles without translations, you'll get better and better at picking up on contextual queues to fill in vocabulary that you don't already know, not by explicitly looking things up, but from pattern matching on actual usage. This will massively accelerate your learning as time goes on, and will also gradually expand the pool of content that you can enjoy without translations, forming a virtuous cycle. Eventually you'll find yourself no longer even thinking about the meaning of words/phrases in English, having learned their meaning from their context in Japanese speech/writing alone.

Some mediums are better suited for this process than others. Anime is especially great because it progresses on its own without giving you time to stress about the meaning of every word of dialog and look things up, which forces you to exercise those pattern matching muscles. Most other mediums let you progress through the story at your own pace, so you actually have to exercise restraint yourself. Of those, manga is probably the easiest to start out with to learn reading since it's still a very visual medium with lots of non-textual contextual cues, and shounen manga especially has furigana over every kanji so you can learn their pronunciation. Visual novels are also great in that they let you exercise both reading and listening skills simultaneously, but are probably not quite as good for beginner-level learning in either area compared to anime/manga. I'd leave fully text-based light novels for last after you're comfortable with reading manga with no furigana and visual novels, as they're pretty impossible to enjoy until you've built up a really solid foundation for reading.

At the end of the day I think there's no substitute for sheer time spent and volume of content consumed, but as long as you keep enjoying the content and the process of learning itself, you'll eventually get there. Have fun!

[idrios]

You and the parent comments have said basically everything that I feel about learning a new language, but I'll still add..

When you're a kid playing with dinosaurs with other kids, you're all saying things like "dinosaurr! Rawrrrr! Dinosaur! Pshhh!" But with adults the conversation would be "Dinosaurs have been extinct for 60 million years, but there's substantial evidence that birds are the evolved form of dinosaurs today." As a new learner you would never understand that, but from the kids you would learn the word "dinosaur" very well.

So as an adult, how do you find other adults who want to play with dinosaurs

[BatFastard]

Find a local LARP group. Imagination goes a long way...

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's still basic-level language learning. To speak like a native you need:

1. Weeks, possibly months of professional voice coaching to teach your mouth muscles to move in ways that eliminate all trace of an accent.

2. Mastery of idiom - learning at least the most popular idioms and knowing when to use them.

3. Mastery of social register and nuance - learning the subtle differences in grammar and word choice that indicate social class and educational level and knowing how and when to indicate both.

4. Some awareness of regional accents, so you can hear where someone is from.

Anyone with a reasonable IQ could master these within a year or two - if they worked on them full-time.

But that wouldn't leave a lot of time for having a normal life.

So probably around half the population never loses the ability to learn a new language with complete fluency. What they lose is the free time to do it, and access to the resources to do it well.

Social register can be a huge problem. E.g. UK English is notoriously indirect and passive-aggressive. When someone in a meeting says "I'm not sure that's a good idea" they often mean "That suggestion is literally idiotic."

Unsurprisingly, foreigners get very, very confused by this.

The Dutch on the other hand are far more direct, and English-Dutch meetings can get very... colourful.

[dheera]

> Social register can be a huge problem. E.g. UK English is notoriously indirect and passive-aggressive. When someone in a meeting says "I'm not sure that's a good idea" they often mean "That suggestion is literally idiotic."

This reminds me of how in Singaporean English you may often have hawker centre or restaurant service people ask you something like "You want a drink or not?"

In US or UK English that might be perceived as rude, especially the "or not" part, but in Singaporean English it is not rude at all, and is in fact just imported from the Chinese "要不要" grammatical construct, which literally translates to "want-don't-want" and is a polite way to ask if someone wants something. In Chinese it is probably the most neutral and polite way to ask the question because you present both options ("want" and "don't want") on equal footing for the other side to choose, and that idea is carried over to English in Singapore.

[greggman3]

It's even harder now with smartphones and internet. Any info you want or need is easily accessible in your first language. For example imagine you want to look up info to get some work done. Go back to 1990 and you'd have to ask your colleagues in the new language but for the last 20 or so years you'd just go online and check in your first language.

For the last 10 years, getting around you can just use google maps in your native language where was 15+ years ago you'd probably have to deal with native maps.

With streaming, even TV/Movies can stay in your first language regardless of where you are in the world.

It's also free to call almost anywhere in the world now so calling back to family and continuing to talk to friends in your original country is trivial. Go back to the 90s and the costs were high enough that you'd likely rarely do it.

I agree with others, the biggest problem is that as an adult you're busy. You have responsibilities and a large set of family and/or friends that you'll generally need/want to do in your first language.

[fomine3]

I have opposite experience. I won't leave my country (Japan) so circumstance is something differ.

Without smartphone or PC browser that has useful translation and dictionary feature, I wouldn't start reading English texts initially.

Some Netflix content only has sub (no dub). It helps listening English. I can even show multiple subs for learning purpose. Even dubbed, Netflix supports to show sub and some foreign dramas are useful to learn cultures. Amazon Prime Video is worse for sub/dub perspective.

I found that English YouTube content is very well made, interesting, and English spoken by YouTuber is relatively easier to hear and understand, compared to like CNN. And YouTube's auto sub feature works very well for English. It's really useful so I wish I can use it for other sites.

[jimkleiber]

I studied abroad in Costa Rica when I was 19 and I remember getting really sick and at something like 2am, my host mother kept trying to chit-chat with me in Spanish and I was feeling so frustrated. But, it helped me learn faster, because I had to struggle through it, not having an English outlet.

Also, I learned Swahili mostly because I didn't have much money in Tanzania and had to negotiate with the local transport so I didn't get charged a super high price.

[SilasX]

Along those lines, I've heard that a quick way to learn a language L is to take a job in the kitchen of a restaurant where the staff only speaks L and is willing to put up with you but never speak your language.

[markvdb]

> For example, I routinely see people in cross-cultural relationships try to learn each others' languages but fail miserably at learning when they get into disagreements and have that disagreement in English instead of the language either person is trying to learn.

This made me smile. My partner and I have different native language backgrounds. During the few serious disagreements we've had, she would curse in my native language. Following your line of thinking, that would prove her excellent language mastery. Even if I'm on the receiving end of the cursing :-)

[hodgesrm]

This.

New languages are hard and require focused attention. I've learned several. In my current job I'm exposed to a lot of Russian. I can read Cyrillic and recognize parts of conversations. It's frustrating not to be able to fill in the gaps to understand fully, but I just don't have the time because of my job. Plus if I did try to switch over, it would leave out other people who only speak English, which is a consideration in group environments.

As a consolation I switched my phone to Russian. :)

[dheera]

I had to learn Cyrillic in one day once. I was visiting Bulgaria without a smartphone, had a paper map with the street names printed in English/Latin characters and the actual street signs were all in Cyrillic. I had to match them up to get around and make the correct turns while walking. It ended up not being that hard, whereas I think trying to learn it in a classroom with a whiteboard would actually be much harder because there are no experience-based memory aids. Like, I remember getting off the train to a big "Централна гара София" sign and was like

"София" -- cool, that kinda looks like it should be "Sofia", I mean, one of the 3 words on the sign has to say Sofia, and the Greek-like "phi" in the middle is probably an f, makes sense ...

"гара" -- that looks like a greek capital Gamma, a, something, and an a ... Oh! it's probably just "Gara" like the French "Gare" or Romanian "Gara" I've seen elsewhere

... so "Централна" kind of looks like ?ehtralha if you imagine л as a lambda and we just learned that р was an r ... and considering where I am, it's actually something that means central, like "Milano Centrale" or "Amsterdam Centraal" as you would see elsewhere ... "Centralna"! (actually more like Tsentralna, as I learned later...) Makes perfect sense!

But there, I just learned about 1/3 of the Cyrillic alphabet within 5 minutes of getting off the train. Somehow that just doesn't happen as fast in a classroom.

These days people might probably just use Google navigation, and don't even use their head anymore, sadly.

[Mediterraneo10]

> These days people might probably just use Google navigation, and don't even use their head anymore, sadly.

I have done some very long journeys through South America. It used to be the case that anyone spending a whole year or more in South America backpacking or cycling would learn Spanish. Why not, if Spanish is considered easy to learn and you have all that free immersion in the language?

But on my last long trip, I was amazed to find that most other shoestring travelers I met were simply using Google Translate on their phones to communicate with the people they met: whether waiters in restaurants, their drivers if they were hitchhiking, local people they struck up a conversation with, etc.

When I said, “Why not learn Spanish if you are here for a whole year?”, the response was basically them rolling their eyes and saying “Whatever, grandpa.”

[tomc1985]

Indeed. I've found the only way I learn a language is full immersion in a country where they speak it natively. And when I do that, I learn fast

[agumonkey]

let's have an emergency based test with adults dropped into a slightly stressful situation and no other choice but to speak foreign.