The older you are when you begin trying to learn a foreign language the harder it is. Like almost everything, actually.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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While there is a point where yes it's gonna be hard no matter what, I'm learning a new language in my 30s and finding it relatively easy. As an adult you already have a large vocabulary and know what more complex words mean, you just need to learn their translation.
Same. I started learning French from English, and my experiences from software development have made learning a new language easier. I also took Spanish almost 20 years ago, and while I don't speak it, I have a better understanding of how languages are structured so learning conjugations is easier since I understand the concept better. Perhaps the specific words I'm learning don't stick in memory as easy as a child, but learning a new language is like 30% vocab and 70% sentence structure and conjugation. The hard part is the "logic", if you will.
May I ask which language you’re learning? I’m curious about Japanese and Arabic (Egyptian Dialect). But both seem really tough to learn.
I'm fluent in English and Spanish, et je suis en train d'apprendre le français
Though I will note that of course, learning a language that's in the same "family" of languages as your mother tongue will always be easier, regardless of age. The jump to Japanese or Arabic from English is far greater.
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Speaking Japanese honestly isn't too hard. Reading/writing Japanese is more difficult but is easier as you realize the complex Kanji are just combinations of simpler kanji and how those relate to meaning. Most of the sounds are also in English.
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I don’t have a source but I’ve read that young children can learn up to 4 languages at once, without mixing them up, before they show any sign of strain.
Switzerland has 4 official languages
Yeah, but trust me. People in Zurich only learn German and a bit of French, they don't care about Italian or Ladin.
I think when people are learning some new skill, eventually they reach a proficiency where they stop actively working on improving. Instead, they'll transition from "improving the skill" to "applying the skill".
Practice does not make "perfect". Practice makes permanent.
That's a really good point a lot of people miss. There are a lot of right answers in this post, different people, different results; age; etc. But if you don't level up the challenge and make sure you are meeting those challenges correctly then you will stagnate. True for everything
I see it ALL the time, across MANY domains.
Language, music, golf, programming, driving, competitive gaming, etc etc.
It's not necessarily a bad thing; it's WAY more effort to push for improvement. Once you've gotten to the point where your skills are serving your needs, is that what you want to invest your finite energy into? Maybe not. God knows I'm not actively trying to improve on every skill I have. Very few. Most of my things (music, games, sport) are just to have fun. If you're having fun you're probably not really improving, and that's ok.
But when people lament that they've hit a wall on a skill, in my experience it's this effect, MUCH more than any other.
I think if OP reflected on their already MASSIVE achievement of becoming functional in another language, they'd likely conclude that their skills rapidly increased up until the point that they had a functional level of the skill, and then hit a plateau once they subconsciously began expending less active effort on improvement.
Chiming in with more context, my PhD was in neuroscience and I worked in a language lab. As others have stated, there is a critical window for learning a language. The biology behind it is fascinating.
As early as about 9 months of age, your brain begins to decide what speech sounds are important to you. For example, in Japanese the difference between /r/ and /l/ sounds doesn't matter, but in English it does. Before 9 months, most babies can tell the difference between the two sounds, but babies living in Japanese-speaking environments (without any English) LOSE this ability after 9ish months!
Language is more than just speech sounds, though. Imagine all these nuances of language - there are critical moments where your brain just decides to accept or reject them, and it's coded somewhere in your DNA.
i've never understood this, i'm slightly older than 9 months and i've been perfectly able to pick up new sounds, and people learn new languages all the time..
Perfectly? In a language system different than your own. English to French/Spanish doesn't require these sounds. English to like Thai or Chinese has a lot.
People learn new languages because you can get the ability back with training (hooray neurplasticity) but it is more difficult and takes longer.
that's moving the goalposts, the previous poster claims that you simply cannot tell the difference between sounds that don't exist in your native language, which is fucking obviously false and they should be ashamed of posting something like that
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Have you tried learning Japanese / English after learning the other? I studied Japanese and learned how to pronounce the /r/ in Japanese correctly.
For some people, the difficulty is less in production, and more in interpretation for someone who is native Japanese speaking and later learned English.
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Conversely, Japanese people learn to tell the difference between an "o" vowel held for shorter or longer periods, a skill that I find incredibly difficult even though I lived in Japan for 7 years.
No, pretty much everybody is able to acquire another language unless they have a neurological disorder that makes them unable to acquire any language at all.
You don't need to be young or be a child to acquire a language either. The critical period hypothesis is a causation-correlation fallacy at best. It points out many issues directly related to traditional language learning methods and not acquisition of another language at an older age; the issues it points out are the resultant bad pronunciation, spelling errors, grammatical errors upon trying to output etc.
These do not result from "improper age" or "an inability to learn another language", they result from how society as a whole has accepted "formal study" and "language courses" as the best ways to acquire a language, which they are definitely not.
Language acquisition is achieved first and foremost by comprehensible input in the target language. Hundreds and thousands of hours of comprehensible input. This can consist of any type of content a person enjoys watching, as long as it's language dense, easy to understand at the start and slowly harder going forward. A good figure to aim for is 10,000 hours of this.
Production of language, or output, is not beneficial to the learner, especially at the first few thousands of hours where it can permanently damage the learner's ability. The reason for early outputting being so detrimental to language acquisition is that as the learner doesn't yet completely know how the target language sounds, and they don't understand grammar rules intuitively yet because of the lack of input, anything they force out will in all likelihood be incorrect and they will unconsciously reinforce the incorrect grammar and pronunciation they just outputted.
So the best way to get to fluency is by doing as much input as possible and while starting out as much no output as possible. This is also usually called immersion learning.
You did mention immersion in your text, but considering that you live in an English speaking country you most definitely were forced to output early to at least survive, which damaged your speaking skills. The reason your reading may be bad is that you may not be reading enough English. If you're talking about language courses when you say “formal study“ and not just skimming through a grammar textbook for an easier time with immersion, which you most likely are, that may have harmed your perception of how English sounds too due to toxic input (the incorrect speech/writing of other learners).
Tatsumoto‘s website is pretty useful for more information and resources on input-based learning. It is primarily for Japanese but as language acquisition doesn‘t differ from one language to another it doesn‘t matter and you can just skip the Kanji-specific parts. I would just think twice about joining their community though as they are pieces of shit, but the website is really well made for a complete language acquisition guide that only uses Libre tooling.
Edit: The amount of misinformation in this thread is just sad. I reached basic English fluency at around 14 and I'm currently doing Japanese immersion, with my comprehension rate of the Japanese content I consume being around 90%. And I'm not 9 months old, as you can also probably tell.
Edit 2: I forgot about Antimoon's Learner Reports. Antimoon as a source is a bit outdated, but they have some interesting stuff in there as well.
TBH that sounds like saying anybody can become "fluent" in calculus if they just apply themselves. In my experience that's just not the case. People have different aptitudes. You might be right that with sufficient motivation and unlimited time, anyone without a neurological disorder could theoretically learn a language, but in a real-life context where people have a lot of other concerns and responsibilities going on, I think it's much more reasonable to say "probably but it depends."
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Really interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
most people dont understand languages. it's sad and i dont understand why they don't understand. thanks for some sanity in here.
Like with any other ability, like painting or playing an instrument, learning a language is something that some people can do better than others.
And while starting to learn a language as a baby or toddler has it's advantages (Our kids basically grew up bilingual), I started learning English in school when I was 11, and I still managed to learn it. Yes, native speakers will still tell me that I have an accent, but I'm good enough that they cannot place it, just that it is not native. With only 2-3 weeks a year in the UK, it is probably the closest I can get. Written English is another matter, anyway. I've probably read way more English books than the average native speaker...
It's important to keep in mind that the difficulty of learning a language is based on the languages you already speak. Finnish is a good example of this, as while Finnish children are able to learn it quickly due to its regularity, English speakers may struggle with how different it is (especially with some almost entirely unfamiliar concepts, such as the partitive case, which has no direct English equivalent)
Or if your native language is similar to the one you're trying to learn. If you speak Danish, learning Norwegian is super easy, learning Swedish is easy.
If you're Italian, speaking Spanish is easy, writing French is easy (even though actually speaking it is harder than Spanish given the strongly different pronunciation).
The thing about language is that you kinda have to start from a young age. The older you start, the more difficult its gonna get.
I was born in Mainland China, I immigrated to the US before I turned 10. It was difficult at first, but now I speak fluent English (American English) with no noticeable accents according to my classmates in highschool.
I wouldn't say to "give up", but like... have realistic expectations.
I'm never gonna learn french or german to nearly as good as a native speaker, not in this lifetime at least. If I hadn't immigrated that early, I'd never have the same proficiency in English. My brother who's just a few years older than me is horrible in English. But honestly, he's an abusive piece of shit that I feel better at the fact that I have better English proficiency than him (sorry to bring up my family drama, I'm going though a lot in life and kinda wanna vent a bit)
Anyways, good luck, its gonna be tough. Try your best 😉
For near-native fluency, there is an age cap at around 10 years. It's much harder for adults, as their critical learning period is closed: https://news.mit.edu/2018/cognitive-scientists-define-critical-period-learning-language-0501
However there is evidence that psychedelics can open up critical periods for social learning (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3) and ongoing research about other critical periods, language learning being one of them.
It might be scientifically accurate but I think the notion of an age cap is misguided. Just because it's harder doesn't mean it's impossible, and the idea of an "age cap" just makes it seem like you shouldn't even try (might just be my interpretation).
Also it's just super helpful to learn something even though you're not perfect.
I've started learning English at 10, put in a lot of work over the years, and it got to near-native in my late 20ies (certified by my language-nerd native-english-speaker wife). At 20 I had trouble booking hostel rooms over the phone.
In my 40ies now and I feel like most of the skills that make "me" today, including playing instruments, programming languages, all kinds of crafts, I learned way past ten and many of them past 20. Started learning Spanish at around 35, nowhere near native but decently conversational. About to start the next course in Catalan soon.
So, this is the one thing where I think people just should ignore the science (which is usually not my stance at all) and get cracking, you can teach an old dog new tricks, and it's always helpful and fun.
So what I'm gathering from this thread is that since I'm 42, I probably shouldn't even try learning a new language? That's reductive but more or less the energy I'm getting.
It's also bullshit. My parents (both 50+) are both learning English right now. Of course they'll never be close to native speakers. But they are absolutely able to communicate to get around, well beyond the basics too.
It doesn't get easier. But it also doesn't get impossible. Motivation is a big step towards it.
My in laws learned English in their seventies!
i have no clue where the fuck people get this idea, it's clearly nonsense since people pick up accents just from living in a different country for a year or two
I'm 57 and learning German. I also have long covid brain and I'm in the menopause. I'm still managing to pick stuff up but I keep forgetting it when I actually have to speak German.
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What do you define as fluency? you literally wrote this in English!
are you talking accent reduction? it's irrelevant to fluency for the most part. that's a cultural mark of power, that's it. if you want to give up some of your identity to blend in better you'd probably work at it more. i bet you have more integrity than that.
what are the issues with reading? there can be many reasons to struggle with reading in any language, not just foreign ones.
anyway, if there's a "too old for language" or "just some people cant", you, at 32, writing on an english forum, you aint it chief. you're doing fine the way you are 👑 just keep living with English in your life as much as you want it to be, enjoy learning new things when it's enjoyable, and go easy on yourself when it's not
Everyone's brain is wired differently.
This doesn't answer your question, but I'm curious. You say your writing is good but your reading is bad. In my experience reading and writing are so intrinsically linked, and reading is the easier of the two. If it's possible can you explain the difference for you? I just find it really interesting!
When I write I visualise the words-sentences in my head and just type it down. I know the meaning of what I’m writing so it’s very mechanical and “automatic”. Like writing hieroglyphs and knowing their meaning but not how they’re pronounced. When I read there’s obviously that voice in my head trying to pronounce what I’m reading, but since nothing is phonetic it’s tough. When I write I don’t have that voice bothering me.
I don't know if its possible, but when reading instead of focusing on the pronunciation of a word (because its not needed at that time when you're just reading), I skip right to determining the meaning or the concept the word describes. The only time this gives me difficulty is when the author of what I'm reading is trying to do word play or make something rhyme. Since I don't "hear" it, I don't get those meanings. This is rare though. Other then that, this gives me the most comprehension when I'm reading in my non-native language.
but my speaking and reading are still bad.
Wow. For most people, reading is the easiest part, writing is more difficult, speaking is hard and understanding speech is the hardest.
I find English pronunciation very irregular (not phonetic). So reading is hard. Speaking too, because when I construct a sentence in English I “write” it in my head (visually-mentally), then “read” it (vocalise what I visualise); but since my reading is bad in the first place…
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Some people just can't, but that's fine, you're still just as valuable a person as anyone who can ! ^^
I don't have any empirical evidence for you on this topic, but in my opinion yes, I think some people are - especially with oral language adaptation. And I think I'm one of them too.
I've tried learning French on and off for most of my life. Did it in school for several years, got a French tutor who helped me scrape by with a C in it, spent a few years with it on Duo Lingo (I know I know, that so is far from perfect), spent time watching French news. And after all that I'd say my French language skills aren't even closer to a conversational level. I especially struggle with the oral side of the language, even though multiple teachers have told me I have a good jack for pronunciation.
I haven't lived there, so maybe that would push my over the edge? But I don't know. I think I'm in the same boat as you.
The language your are learning also factors in. I've also tried learning Spanish and have found that easier. Meanwhile, I tried learning Mandarin and was completely lost. And English is often described as being ready to learn at as basic level but difficult to master. It's such a relatively unstructured language with so many weird exceptions.
But with all that said, don't give up! It might just take longer for the oral part to lock in. And your written English is excellent.
English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English is harder than, say English to Spanish or Arabic because the sounds are so very different - I am sure I simply can't hear some of the different sounds in tonal languages, and had a friend who moved here from Taiwan when she was so young she learned better in English than Taiwanese but still she could not hear the difference between ear and year.
I don't think it's impossible but do think it's unusual. My dad was bilingual English and Spanish and I wish my parents had done the "one speaks English one speaks Spanish" language immersion but we only spoke English at home.
Anyone who can learn one language, can learn an other.
But they will have to be willing and available.
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