Quote:
Originally Posted by strelnik
I spent years running language training programs, went to grad school in the area and speak 5 languages well enough to write this forum in any of them. So here's my 2 cents, because I hate fake claims for language schools as much as the CL claims for 50 mpg W126 vehicles! 
As children, humans are mental sponges that pick all this up super fast and integrate mental concepts from any other human language.
Once you hit puberty, your brain literally changes due to chemical changes and it's harder to learn like you did as a kid. |
Yup, my own experience agrees with what you said. I spent the early part of my life in Japan. I didn't even go to school there, but me and my brother both spoke fluent Japanese just from watching TV and interacting with local kids on the playground. This sponge effect however works both ways, i.e. learning and forgetting. Within a year of leaving Japan, we only remembered a few words. I had a similar experience with the Indonesian language. I also took German classes in high school, but because I was never immersed in a German-speaking environment, I never learned it well and soon after arriving in the US I forgot most of my German.
As to my English, I started learned it properly right around puberty (about 13), so it was almost hard, especially with my accent. I still had a strong accent when I was 18 and first arrived in the US, and I have since corrected it to the point that most Americans can't tell that I'm not native here, but it hasn't been easy and occasionally a foreign-accented word still slips out of my mouth and my cover gets blown.
