I’m in my late 30’s and learning Chinese and Japanese simultaneously. The age thing is almost entirely a myth. There are three factors in which age matters:
1. Older people get set in their ways, and learning a language requires rethinking how you think. This limitation is purely psychological and not biological and you can avoid it merely by giving it an honest attempt. Learning a foreign language can be a great way to to keep your mind fresh.
2. TIME. Learning a language requires thousands of hours of commitment. Young people have time to commit to it. Older people with work and careers do not, and so often don’t make as much progress. But if you chart progress vs. hours studied, age disappears as a factor. (There are studies of this, but I’m on mobile right now and can’t pull them up.)
3. Truly young people (under the age of 12) still have the ability to hear sounds not used in their mother tongue. This is why transplanted kids can speak fluently and pass as natives, but adults and even teens develop heavy accents. Older people still have enough neural flexibility to retrain their ear, but it takes much more time and conscious effort. This is the only truly biological age-related factor, and countering it just requires a bit more time and conscious attention.
If you are learning a languages as a busy adult, the key is to find ways to immerse yourself in the language, even if it is just passively listening to things on a loop while you do your day job, listening to audiobooks during your commute, and always having a study book or flash cards at hand everywhere you go. You need to study not 10 minutes a day, but 5-10 hours a day—but if you’re smart, that time will double dip for other things and you can get away with just 1 hour a day of real committed study, and the rest is various forms of background practice throughout the day.
1. Older people get set in their ways, and learning a language requires rethinking how you think. This limitation is purely psychological and not biological and you can avoid it merely by giving it an honest attempt. Learning a foreign language can be a great way to to keep your mind fresh.
2. TIME. Learning a language requires thousands of hours of commitment. Young people have time to commit to it. Older people with work and careers do not, and so often don’t make as much progress. But if you chart progress vs. hours studied, age disappears as a factor. (There are studies of this, but I’m on mobile right now and can’t pull them up.)
3. Truly young people (under the age of 12) still have the ability to hear sounds not used in their mother tongue. This is why transplanted kids can speak fluently and pass as natives, but adults and even teens develop heavy accents. Older people still have enough neural flexibility to retrain their ear, but it takes much more time and conscious effort. This is the only truly biological age-related factor, and countering it just requires a bit more time and conscious attention.
If you are learning a languages as a busy adult, the key is to find ways to immerse yourself in the language, even if it is just passively listening to things on a loop while you do your day job, listening to audiobooks during your commute, and always having a study book or flash cards at hand everywhere you go. You need to study not 10 minutes a day, but 5-10 hours a day—but if you’re smart, that time will double dip for other things and you can get away with just 1 hour a day of real committed study, and the rest is various forms of background practice throughout the day.