I’m from Vietnam. I’ve been in the UK for 10 years now. When I met my English husband 13 years ago at 19 I knew 0 English. We communicated using machine translation. So that’s when I started learning English. Fast forward to present day after immersion, living in an English speaking country, formal study, etc. and I’d say my writing and listening (understanding) are good, but my speaking and reading are still bad. I kind of gave up on trying to become fluent at this point.
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.
At my work there is like a 70-year-old security guard who spends his 12-hour days learning new languages. I don’t know how his other languages are, but when he speaks Spanish to me, he does so extremely well. The only issue is that sometimes he gets mixed up and speaks Mandarin instead of Spanish to me but we’re not gonna fault him for that one.
To be fair, the man is a retired physiology professor so he’s been learning his whole life and is probably a pretty smart dude, but I’m sure if you apply yourself and enjoy learning, you wouldn’t have an issue at least getting the basics of another language.
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.
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
This thread is just bullshit.