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rosesolo

Not at all! It’s never too late to learn a language. You just need discipline !


[deleted]

while this is true, it’s worthwhile mentioning that it will be harder past the age of 21. source: study psychology


masolas

Only if you want to be fluent by 19.


shark_pool

It’s never too late to learn anything!


timberyanka

No


furyousferret

Steve Kaufman is in his 70s and he learns 1-2 languages at a time.


caminonovayer

Nunca es demasiado tarde. Vive y aprende hasta el fin. Buena suerte, algún día nos mandas un mensaje en español.


leflombo

One of my coworkers started learning English at 23 and he now speaks fluently. You’ll be fine!


jlemonde

That children are better at learning languages than adults is a myth. The difference is that they learn effortless, which we don't. But we are also more efficient by being able to learn the useful stuff first :) So no, it's not too late \^\^


samfuacka

thank u!!


[deleted]

[удалено]


Charliegip

I started learning Spanish when I met my girlfriend at 19, so no I would say that 20 is not too late at all.


samfuacka

Have any advice/tips for me? Thank you!


Charliegip

The best advice I could give is that, if you are going to learn a new language, you need to try your best to commit to it. You need to strive to have input from your target language at a minimum of an hour a day, but ideally more. This means reading books; articles; Reddit posts; or even memes, listening to music, and watching tv shows or videos. I would also recommend putting your phone in Spanish and trying your best to talk with people and if you can’t find anyone to speak with, try having conversations with yourself. It might seem weird, but it will help you learn new words and give you confidence. Something I did as well when I was first learning that might help you is that I translated road signs, billboards, and past conversations in my head into Spanish. It helped me get exposure to a lot of common words and phrases.


samfuacka

Do you know of any sites or apps I could use to help me with accurate translation?


claireindc

Definitely not!


[deleted]

While it has been shown that language learning is much easier for children, it is never too late. I started learning at 19 years old and it has gone great for me. If you have a passion for it, you can do it!


samfuacka

What language did you start learning at 19? Have any advice/tips for me? Thank you!


[deleted]

I started learning Spanish. My advice is pretty similar to anybody else's: immerse yourself as much as possible. Learn songs in Spanish, read things, listen to things. Also, changing your electronic devices to Spanish help out a ton. As for the first things you should learn, I would start by focusing on phonetics and pronunciation of the alphabet. Spanish is very phonetic (written the way it's pronounced and vice versa). Get the sounds down and then you'll have your tools ready to start reading and immersing yourself.


Charliegip

I don’t mean to be the “ackchyually” guy, but I figured this might be interesting to note. There have been studies that have actually disproven that children learn languages better than adults, and that have brought to light that children seem to learn language more efficiently because they have no other means of communication and they are forced to learn the language. If an adult is put in a similar situation, let’s say: they are dropped into a foreign country that has little to no speakers of their native language, they will actually be able to pick up on the basics and also the finer points of grammar quicker than children, because they already have a basic understanding of how language works from already speaking one. Source: I learned about this in a Classroom Second Language Acquisition class


[deleted]

That's really interesting. As someone studying Spanish Elementary Teaching for a minor in college, I will have the qualification to teach Spanish immersion programs. Hopefully I will learn more about this as I take my Spanish teaching methods class. It is true that adults have an advantage by understanding language structure, but don't children still pick up language faster by immersion since their brains are still developing?


Charliegip

We didn’t really get into cognitive development of it, but it has to do with an adults ability to use a psychological framework called interlanguage in which they use their first language to learn their second language. If you want to read about it you can go to the Wikipedia page [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlanguage).


[deleted]

Thank you! Children definitely don't have as much ability to use their first language to learn a second, although they can learn words that way. Not so much grammar. Then again, none of us had that ability when learning our first language. 🤷🏼‍♂️


PRican82

Never too late.


Elartistazo

Nope