
It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/opinion/contributors/learning-french-in-middle-age.html
======
blacksqr
It seems to me that foreign language learning is an area where computer
technology has clearly miserably fallen short of its potential.

Apps like Duolingo and Babel are nice, but they seem to me more oriented
toward making the user feel good about making progress then about achieving
mastery in any useful time frame.

Flashcard tools like Anki and Tinycards are nice, but they lack enough readily
available content to be really useful. Anyone with the expertise and
perspective to use these tools in a practical time frame to assemble a deck of
the many thousands of words necessary to achieve mastery doesn't need the
tools.

It should be possible, using relatively simple tools, for a person to immerse
oneself virtually in language learning materials. It should be simple to
choose a rate of exposure to material from trickle to firehose. It should be
possible to see an estimate of time remaining to achieve functional fluency at
the current rate of progress, no different from the progress bar you see when
downloading files.

Instead, each individual is forced to cadge together learning materials, of
varying quality, in dribs and drabs; and guess at ones progress.

There are plenty of full-time University foreign language teaching staff
around the world, they should be able to collaborate in production of content
for online learning tools.

Yet neither the sophistication nor the efficiency of foreign language learning
seems to have improved much in my lifetime.

~~~
panglott
The problem is that the tools you need are "listening to and interacting with
people in the target language". Human language is a problem of interpreting
the creative social signals of other human beings, and there's no way to
automate that. With the Web, YouTube and internet radio, the actual amount of
target-language material that a person can expose themselves to is hugely,
hugely more available than it was 20-30 years ago.

You have to keep in mind what a tool is trying to accomplish relative to the
personal development it takes to grow into another human language. Different
levels of learners require different kinds of instruction. Bilingual
instruction is quickest if a person has zero knowledge of the language
whatever. Absolute beginners need direct instruction in phonology. An Anki
deck is to build basic vocabulary or literacy for a person who has some.
Duolingo is there to get you comfortable with basic grammar or phrases, to get
you interacting with native speakers in the first place once you stumble off
the plane. A more advanced speaker might need accent reduction work.

Anki is fantastic at flashcards. Duolingo is fantastic at translation
exercises, way better than what we had a few decades ago. Definitely the
author in the OP should be using Anki rather than postcards on her bed.

"Mastery"-level linguistic tasks include things like writing creative poetry
in the language that another person finds moving, describing the movements of
a complex machine, or composing an essay in a specific literary style—things
that native speakers may find difficult without formal training. There's just
no way Duolingo can do that.

I took a survey recently that clarified a lot of this for me. The questions
were all things like: What percentage of your time do you spend listening to
music in the target language (and your native language)? What percentage of
your time do you spend watching moveis in the target language (and your native
language)? What percentage of your time do you spend reading books in the
target language (and your native language)? What percentage of your time do
you spend thinking and interacting with other people and thinking in the
target language (and your native language)? If I spend 1% of my time or less
in the target language and 99% in my native language, it's no wonder that I
have plateaued in it.

~~~
blacksqr
The fact that digital tools can't be used to achieve total native-level
fluency shouldn't be used as a reason not to try to improve what's available.
It should be possible at least to use digital tools to learn to listen to and
understand foreign language media at a useful level... I'd love to be able to
watch a movie in the language I'm studying and understand 90% of what's going
on. But that seems like an impossible dream given the available tools and my
current rate of progress.

If I could reach just that goal, I'd be delighted to explore other more
personally immersive avenues for taking my language skills to the next level.

~~~
irq11
If you go to language-learning forums (e.g. the Japanese learning subreddit)
you’ll find a lot of people who spend 95% of their time wanking with learning
tools, and 5% (or less) actually studying. Everyone thinks the tools are the
problem. Moreover, fixing tools is easier and less painful than doing the
grueling work of learning a language. As a result, lots of people get caught
in the trap of believing that fluency is One Good Tool Away. It isn’t.

The most important part of the parent’s comment is the one you overlooked:
_you need to listen and interact with people in the native language._ The more
hours you spend talking with people in your target language, the better you’ll
become. Tools help on the margins, but there’s no magic bullet that will
eliminate the time and exposure required.

~~~
blacksqr
>you’ll find a lot of people who spend 95% of their time futzing with learning
tools, and 5% (or less) actually studying

Exactly my point. It shouldn't be necessary to spend all that time futzing
with tools, the tools should be there, ready to use.

>you need to listen and interact with people in the native language.

Such people are not available in all areas. Online availability does not
scale. These are precisely the issues that digital tools should be good at
addressing, but have failed to do so.

~~~
irq11
_”Exactly my point. It shouldn 't be necessary to spend all that time futzing
with tools, the tools should be there, ready to use.”_

It _isn’t_ necessary. The tools are fine, and/or improving them won’t solve
the fundamental problem. People are just procrastinating.

 _”Online availability does not scale. These are precisely the issues that
digital tools should be good at addressing, but have failed to do so.”_

Short of making an AGI that fluently speaks your target language, there are no
obvious improvements to learning tools that will address the fundamental
problem: you need to talk to actual humans.

~~~
blacksqr
If that is true, then not only digital tools, but all books, classes, tests
and every other technique aside from what you recommend for language learning
are fraudulent wastes of time.

~~~
panglott
Language learning courses and tools are just ways to kickstart normal language
acquisition, so you don't have to go through the years of gurgling like a baby
has to. Learning to communicate in a new language isn't exactly like learning
some other kind of skill--it's much, much huger.

When you're speaking your native language, you're decoding and processing
complex social signals in real time at multiple levels of structure
(phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic). Even the best
AIs can only get a couple of these levels of structure, with significant error
rates, and only in a handful of well-studied languages (there are hundreds or
thousands of natural languages). How much time does it take for you to learn
1000 vocabulary words? A natural language will have tens of thousands. A
comprehensive grammar of the English language would be dozens of heady volumes
and have less information about English grammar than any competent native
speaker.

Learning a language is just an astonishingly huge task. No course or system
can cover it all. Mostly they're just trying to make things easier for you.

------
hluska
This is anecdotal and I am a sample of one, so do with this as you will. I
have learned to speak French at two particular times. When I was very young,
my Grandma Yvette often spoke French to me and I spent three years in French
immersion. Now, I am an adult who barely speaks the language, but I have a
daughter who I badly want to bless with the French language. So, I’m learning
again...

I have noticed two things. The first is that when I was a kid, I didn’t care
who I spoke French to, how loud I was, or how many words I mangled. It was
like a cool code for me. As an adult, I’m damned near petrified to speak the
language. This is unlike me. I’ll gladly spend a week cold calling potential
clients, but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to
introduce myself or ask how they are. I’ll ask a stranger for money in
English, but I’ll be damned if I ask a stranger to pass the cream in French.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that it’s a lot harder to learn how to pronounce
things. Some sounds seem to be engrained from years of speaking when I was
young. Other words, crap.

Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Yet, I could
walk into any French speaking country in the world and get a long term
disability pension just by saying it. Last week, I even found a French couple
to help me and I’ve been doing lots of drills, but when I record it and play
it back, I sound quite soft in the head.

Who would have thought that a phrase that translates to ‘it’s nothing’ would
be such a big problem for me?? :)

~~~
bambax
> _As an adult, I’m damned near petrified to speak the language._

Have a drink or two. Really. I've noticed I'm much better in a foreign
language when I'm mildly drunk (or at least I think I am, which helps get past
the self-awareness block).

~~~
nemosaltat
You probably do!

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026988111773568...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881117735687?journalCode=jopa)

------
atemerev
The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes.

If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst
thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even
that.

If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul.
Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the
heretic!)

~~~
bpyne
An anecdote from a trip to Paris, I walked into a store to look for a gift for
someone back home. After making the greeting in French, I started to explain
what I was looking for. The woman stopped me. With a dramatic eye roll she
said, "Speak English, pleeeease."

An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess
to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon
as we started to ask about a table, she stopped us and said, "No no no no.
This will be in English."

It's only two anecdotes. I may have simply run into rude people. But, they
made me not care to ever speak French.

My daughter is taking Spanish in school right now. I'm learning a little as
well. We have a large population of people around us from different Spanish
speaking countries. They seem to be very tolerant of mistakes. I'm very much
looking forward to learning more of their language.

~~~
bambax
> _I may have simply run into rude people._

Why did you think those people were rude, instead of, say, trying to be
helpful?

French is difficult to understand when spoken badly, even for natives (maybe
esp. for natives). We don't understand what people are trying to say --
really. We don't try to be condescending: we truly do. not. understand. I get
that foreigners / tourists may not believe it, but it is true.

~~~
learc83
It's not what they said that was rude. It's the way they said it.

Also I doubt that French is objectively harder to understand when spoken
poorly than most languages. Especially when you consider tonal languages like
Vietnamese and Mandarin.

~~~
bambax
Harder, I don't know. Hard, yes.

~~~
learc83
Difficulty in understanding non native speakers is largely subjective. It
depends heavily on the perception of the listener.

Basically if the listener believes that it is difficult, it will be.
Additionally, the harder the listener tries to engage with and understand the
non-native speaker, the easier it becomes.

French could be unique among languages, but my strong suspicion is that if
what you describe is true for most French speakers, it's mostly due to a
widespread cultural perception that non-native French speakers are hard to
understand rather than objective difficulty.

There is a professor at Georgia State University who's primary research focus
is on this topic if you're interested in reading more.

[http://www2.gsu.edu/~eslsal/cv.htm](http://www2.gsu.edu/~eslsal/cv.htm)

~~~
bambax
> _There is a professor at Georgia State University who 's primary research
> focus is on this topic if you're interested in reading more.
> [http://www2.gsu.edu/~eslsal/cv.htm](http://www2.gsu.edu/~eslsal/cv.htm) _

Interesting and intriguing! Thanks!

------
imtringued
It's just a matter on how much time you spend learning the language.

Even if you only consider the time you spent in school merely learning your
own native language those school lessons will add up to thousands of hours.

How many adults, who have already "learned" a foreign language, dedicate 6
hours per week purely on further improving their skills in that language for
12 years?

If you are worried about not knowing certain rare words then using a spaced
repetition system with a word deck that contains the first 20000 or even 40000
words should help a lot. You will quickly rush through the words you already
know. I can do 50 reviews in less than two minutes if I have memorized the
words but 50 unknown words will take me at least 20 minutes. At a rate of 30
new words per day you can do 10000 words per year + half a year at the end to
make sure every card reaches maturity.

~~~
tambre
What website/application would you recommend for spaced repetition of
vocabulary?

I've found the changing Windows logon screens quite nice, since every other
day or so there's a new beautiful picture along with a few bubbles of text in
German, enabling me to learn a few new words (though I'll probably forget most
of them).

~~~
jdietrich
Anki is very powerful, but Memrise is a more user-friendly option that
includes ready-made card decks for most popular languages.

[https://www.memrise.com/](https://www.memrise.com/)

~~~
intertextuality
You don't want ready-made decks except at the very beginning. Once you get
past words like "mom" that have very obvious usage, these decks aren't great
because they lack examples and structure.

Instead, one should use Anki to make their own decks with words that they find
whilst learning the language.

~~~
Nadya
You can, and I have, make your own Memrise courses as well. I'm better at
remembering to visit a website than I am at remembering to open a program.
It's a silly difference, but I almost _always_ have a browser open and every
new tab I open serves as a reminder. I always fail to remember to open/use
software. The times I've tried converting to Anki rather than relying that
Memrise will continue to be available, my study time per week dropped by about
95%~.

~~~
intertextuality
You actually can use anki online, it's ankiweb.net. You can't modify decks on
the website but it works for studying daily cards. Otherwise I use the mac osx
or ios apps.

------
bambax
> _And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a
> sweater is a “boulouche”_

It's not. It's "bouloche" \--
[https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche)

> _When my kids brought home notices telling me to check their hair for “poux”
> (pronounced “poo”), I correctly deduced that it meant lice. But later, in a
> first-aid course, I was perplexed when the instructor told us to immediately
> check an unconscious person for “poux.” He was telling us to check for
> “pouls” — a pulse, pronounced identically._

There are homophones in many (most? all?) languages; but in this case "poux"
are almost always plural (les poux / des poux) whereas a pulse is always
singular (le pouls).

"Check his pulse" would be said as "vérifiez son pouls" and "check if he's got
lice", "vérifiez s'il a des poux": it seems hard or impossible for the author
to mix them up.

~~~
sametmax
It's not hard to them to make this mistake: "le", "la", "les" is all "the" for
english natives, while verbs and adjective don't change according to plural or
gender.

A lot of my mistakes in spanish comes from me trying to call masculine
something that is not and vice versa.

French is a difficult language to learn:

\- many letters are useless relics from the past, twisted, accentuated or
silent.

\- conjugations, plural, gender requires a lot of memory.

\- rich and complex system to explain the chain of though or events. It's
powerful to use, but it's surely hard to learn, and even harder to master.

\- we like have a name for everything. Unless you know your latin, guessing
meaning is not natural.

\- verbose. If you a used to go to the point, well...

\- similar sounds can be made by so many different combinations: au(x), eaux,
ot(s), o(s), ô, oh... And we don't even agree on how to say it, rose is not
said the same way in Paris, Toulouse or Nice.

\- way less fun easy original french video content than in english (spanish is
terrible in the same way). Not saying we have nothing, I like to advice "un
gars, une fille" for french noobs, it's easy to get, and light. But learning
english on Netflix is a treat.

~~~
jdietrich
_> French is a difficult language to learn_

For a native English speaker, it's one of the easiest languages to learn.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html)

~~~
intertextuality
Here is a better resource:
[https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm](https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm)

Both resources list the languages according to "time to Professional Working
Proficiency" level. Not native level.

Learning any language to a native degree is going to be exceedingly difficult.
French has more difficult _pronunciation_ and spelling rules, significantly
moreso than Spanish or German. Even for native English speakers.

The fact that overall, learning French is easier than say Korean, does not
change the fact that French has difficult pronunciation.

------
oogway8020
I started learning french at 50 to be an example to my teenage son,
encouraging him to learn a second language rather than playing fortnite. It is
harder when you are not in french speaking area/country. Everything around us
is english. I listen ici.radio-canada during commute and after 6 month in, I
can understand 60-70%. But if I would be in Quebec listening french all day, I
think learning would be much faster even at middle age.

~~~
masklinn
> But if I would be in Quebec listening french all day, I think learning would
> be much faster even at middle age.

Full immersion is obviously a huge booster to fluency by a mix of opportunity
(you're basically learning and practicing all the time) and necessity (you
want to navigate the country without being stuck to a dictionary or
translation application).

As long as you have a working basis and don't hang out too much with expats
from your own country / first language (it's obviously comfortable and easy to
slip into an insular community) even 3~6 months will do absolute wonders.

------
agumonkey
I despised French a bit (my own native tongue), as I grew up with a little
fondness for English, and spent most of my time speaking English (probably
Engrish at times). Then I got.. say bored of casual (tech/web) English, and
started to feel happy again with French, even accounting for all its odd rules
and twists and everything. I felt it was a lovely bag of varied multitudes and
shades that were very good for painting pictures with higher levels of colors
and not being strictly informative or factual. I guess it's a question of
desire and maturity .. at times you want easy and predictable, and maybe later
you want to play a little more with words. And this might not be a French-only
case, I'm just giving my 2 centimes ;)

~~~
pcardoso
I relate to that. As a Portuguese, I had both English and French in school. As
a teen nerd learning Basic on the ZX Spectrum, English was much useful than
weird french. I now regret not paying much attention to those classes.

~~~
agumonkey
Don't worry, to each his own path, as I said, even as a French I went away
from it.. we all evolve.

------
adrianN
Learning a language at any age is hard. It's just harder to fit in thousands
of hours of deliberate practice in your thirties than in your teens. As the
author correctly notes one needs to know tens of thousands of words to have a
reasonable chance of getting through a text without encountering an unknown
word. To get to that number a spaced repetition system is much more useful
than sticky notes, but it doesn't help much with the time needed for practice.

~~~
fabricexpert
People forget how much time they spent learning something when they were
younger. I feel like a lot of adults give up and use age as an excuse for not
trying new things.

~~~
fiblye
I think this is one of the biggest points. Kids spend all day in school being
forced to learn, they come home and do homework, and everything they're doing
day to day is exposing them to something new. Every little thing they know
feels like a huge accomplishment.

Adults are generally getting paid to do things they can already do and when we
get home, we tend to piss away our time with things we know we'll like and
aren't too unfamiliar. We can spend a week learning something, but in terms of
our gross knowledge, it's comparatively nothing at all.

I'm not quite middle aged yet, but I'm working on learning my third language
and started just a few months ago. I'm setting aside a solid hour a day +
small 2-5 minute intervals throughout the day, and I'm learning faster than my
second language due to the effort I'm putting in. I won't deny that it does
get harder to learn completely new concepts as we age, but one benefit we have
over kids is we know how to learn effectively and we have exposure with wide
arrays of topics. Try to find ways to apply your other accumulated knowledge
and discipline to new topics and you can learn faster.

And I mean, shit, you ever see kids try to learn Spanish or French in middle
school or high school? Most can barely put together a basic greeting at the
end of 1 or 2 years. A 30 or 40 something who reads a phrase book during lunch
break and watches some 5 minute grammar practice videos at night 4 days a week
will learn faster than 9/10 teenagers.

~~~
barry-cotter
> I think this is one of the biggest points. Kids spend all day in school
> being forced to learn, they come home and do homework, and everything
> they're doing day to day is exposing them to something new. Every little
> thing they know feels like a huge accomplishment.

You’re far too kind to school. You can teach an illiterate 9 year old to read
English in 40 hours, about the same time as it takes to cover the entire
primary school math curriculum with a 12 year old. Homework in primary school
has nugatory impacts on learning; it’s a theft of time from children and their
families for ~0 benefit. You can take a native speaker of Mandarin from
completely illiterate to grade level in reading and writing in three years and
that’s either the most difficult or the second most difficult language after
Japanese to write. If children actually retained what they were taught in
school maybe it would be worth it but the average US adult doesn’t know each
state has two senators. People do not retain knowledge they don’t use or find
interesting.

School before 12 years old is an exercise in teaching children things slowly
and haltingly that they are capable of picking up quickly and easily in a
fraction of the time two years later, and things that genuinely help children
like play time, especially unstructured play are forced out to increase test
scores in earlier age groups when the increase washes out to nothing compared
to those of two decades ago by the end of high school.

------
shay_ker
One thing that's really helped me learn languages is watching tv shows or
movies with native subtitles. I had this revelation years ago in Spanish
class. At the time, I had taken years of Spanish in school and yet I could
barely speak or understand Spanish.

One day, our teacher made us watch Pan's Labyrinth with Spanish subtitles. It
was such a struggle to watch, but because the movie is so good we paid
attention anyway, and context clues help you along the way.

I vividly remember the next morning on the subway to school, where there were
two men speaking Spanish and I suddenly realized I could understand everything
they were saying. It totally blew my mind that I could finally understand
Spanish!

I used this same technique years later when I lived in Italy for a summer. It
was a lot of work, but I did the following:

1) Learned enough basic Italian grammar that I could translate a sentence by
looking up words & conjugation rules 2) I watched Italian movies, both good
and "blockbuster" ones, with English subtitles so I could understand the movie
3) Then, I re-watched the movies with Italian subtitles. If I saw/heard a
sentence I couldn't immediately understand, I'd pause and hand translate it

Even though Spanish & Italian are quite similar, this was still surprisingly
effective. I also enjoy watching movies, so it was also quite fun =)

There's probably some science as to why this technique works, but I don't
know. It's probably because watching tv/movies is most similar to real-life
conversations, as opposed to what you get in a classroom or a book. I never
knew how to write an essay in Italian, but I also never cared.

------
arkh
> If required, I can read French books.

Not reading books will limit your vocabulary. If you read when required, you
don't read.

~~~
onli
It's not like it's actually possible to comfortably read french books when you
learn the language, with their specific grammatical tenses only used in
literature. I speak French fluently and at home but I'd be incapable to read a
complicated book in that language (while I'm absolutely able to read English
books and do that all the time, and speak English way less often).

~~~
intertextuality
You don't get better at what you don't do.

English books use different registers, vocabulary, and grammatical tenses than
found in everyday speech also. Basically every language has differences in
formally printed books and daily speech.

And it's not like you have to read dense texts only. There are plenty of short
books, or books with lighter material, that learners can definitely read. It's
a very good way to discover new vocabulary and see how words are used in what
contexts.

~~~
onli
Written English matches spoken English almost 1:1. Written French could as
well be a different language (hyperbole, but not that much). "Just read books"
is just not good advice in this case. Reading comics would work, maybe.

------
mseidl
I've found that, learning vocabulary was easier when I was younger, but I
struggled with grammar. Now that I'm a lot older, it's harder for me to hold
on to vocabulary but I pick up the grammar stuff much quicker.

------
drchewbacca
This article would have been much more convincing if the author had done some
testing of their actual level in French rather than just talking about how
insecure they feel.

It's possible the author's language is poor, it's also possible it's very good
but they see "great" as normal and so discount what they know due to imposter
syndrome.

I've heard a lot of people apologise for their English after speaking
flawlessly.

~~~
mattmanser
That's roughly what it argues further on in the article.

 _Dr. Hartshorne also points out that native speakers have exceptional
precision. Even someone with 99 percent grammatical accuracy sounds foreign.
He guesses that I have about 90 percent accuracy, which shouldn’t feel like
failure. “Imagine if you decided you were going to pick up golf in your 30s,
and you got to the point where you could keep up in a game with professional
players. You’d think that’s actually really good. But for some reason, just
being able to keep up in language feels not as impressive.”_

------
asark
1) it's really, really hard to effectively drill vocab out of context because
the gender of nouns affects everything around them, the indefinite form
conceals gender (via contraction) in too many cases to be of much use, while
the definite is awkward and still doesn't really drill modifying words around
it anyway. To do it right you've really gotta come up with a few short model
sentences or phrases involving adjectives, which is a giant pain in the ass.

2) It's bizarrely hard to get ahold of French media online, outside the EU. I
just want to stream _Le Juste Prix_ , damnit! Makes one envy Japanese
learners. The language may, in some ways, be a lot harder, but there's _so_
much media readily available and there are _so_ many tools for it.

------
eagsalazar2
Courses, instructors, etc all fall short because ultimately mastery requires
deep and prolonged immersion which the author and many people post-middle age
never commit to. Her kids live in France yet she talks in English at home,
doesn't watch TV/movies in French, and doesn't read much in French (inferred
from one of her comments) - all her choices and all sufficiently big deal to
100% explain her lack of mastery.

I'm far from convinced based on anything in this article that learning
languages is actually harder for middle aged people at all vs kids. Consider
typical 2nd language education in the US: 1hr/day for 4 years during
highschool - those 14-18yr olds speak terribly also and the reason has nothing
to do with age.

------
yoz-y
Read the article to find out why, came out disappointed.

Yes, the French has many specific, unoften used words; but so does any other
language. Some words sound similar or the same but that is not exceptional
either.

------
crazygringo
Key answer: "And though I live in France, I’m not immersed enough. I use
French for work, but I speak lots of English too, including with my kids and
husband. I don’t have an “école horizontale” — a romantic partner with whom I
speak only French."

I've lived abroad in multiple countries and have met a _lot_ of people trying
to learn the language. Without fail, you _absolutely_ have to have either a
full-time job in the language, _or_ be romantically involved with someone in
the language (without falling back to English) and spend a ton of time with
them. That's simply the only way you'll get enough hours of exposure in.

Also you can learn English fluently without living in an English-speaking
country, but only by spending basically all your free time watching English
TV/films and listening to music. Not just every so often, but you make
consuming English content your _life_.

If you're American living abroad but are married to another American and your
job is mostly in English, it doesn't matter that you live in the country --
I've never seen anyone in that situation master the language. It just doesn't
give you the necessary thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of
exposure, and because it's low-level exposure, you also quickly reach the
point where you're forgetting as many words as you're learning, so it's not
even cumulative -- you just reach a plateau. There's even an academic name for
it, just Google "intermediate language plateau".

~~~
Tenoke
>I've lived abroad in multiple countries and have met a lot of people trying
to learn the language. Without fail, you absolutely have to have either a
full-time job in the language, or be romantically involved with someone in the
language (without falling back to English) and spend a ton of time with them.
That's simply the only way you'll get enough hours of exposure in.

I've met many people who have learnt to speak a language (most examples would
be for English and German, latter without consuming that much German media)
without having this, and am currently learning a language without anything
resembling this. Your statement simply seems wrong to me no matter how I read
it.

~~~
dorchadas
Agreed. There's a a few guys on /r/languagelearning who learned Italian to a
C1 level without ever stepping foot in the country, or being married to a
native. It can be done, it's just more difficult.

------
cageface
I learned Vietnamese in my mid 40s. I think it’s just a matter of persistence
and patience. As adults we’re less willing to be novices for an extended
period of time.

~~~
deanstag
NOTE: this comment does not add anything to the discussion

"As adults we’re less willing to be novices for an extended period of time."
\- I read this comment and thought to myself "Interesting" and moved on to
other web pages. And then it hit me again and again that this was absolutely
true in a lot of cases where me or my friends found it frustrating to learn
something new. Thank you for putting it this way.

------
deanalevitt
I moved, in my 30's, to a non-English-speaking country. I tried Babble and
DuoLingo. Babble was crap, and DuoLingo was alright at slowly expanding my
vocab, but the sentences were idiotic. One example was "The horse is touching
me" which I found particularly useless. I also tried private lessons, but the
cost was high and required more effort than I had time for.

Rosetta Stone has, so far, been the best, precisely because it relies on
immersion.

The downside is that I think the situations are traveler centric, and overly
simplistic.

To my mind, the best way I've improved is by memorizing "scripts" of common
interactions. For example, ordering coffee, or memorizing answers to the
common questions people ask me about myself.

I've never said "The boy jumps over the water," in any language, but I have
said, "I'd like a double espresso with hot water on the side, no milk or
sugar" or "I'll be at home at 2 pm" many times. As I add scripts, my vocab
improves.

Most fluent immigrants I've spoken to say that watching a ton of TV in the
language was a massive help.

~~~
philippoi
I've been consumed with this idea since going back to France for a few days
after living there for five months almost 10 years earlier. I had the
experience of trying to learn Danish mostly by immersion and a little by
terrible classes (no one seems to have an idea how to make Danish phonetics
decently teachable, and that's the number 1 challenge in Danish). I theorized
that foreign language learning has evolved to develop a pyramidal approach
towards literary translation. That's definitely an important skill, but my
guess is 99% of people interested in in a foreign language don't care about
that level of language mastery, even in their native tongue, and would much
prefer to learn enough grammar to start to acquire more and more
conversational fluidity. People shouldn't read poetry in foreign language
learning, but magazines. People should watch TV, partly because there's so
much TV/video available in every language now via the web, and it's a great
venue to hear diversified fluent speakers speak, rather than just actors or
newscasters who are trained in speaking as clearly as possible.

My plan for Danish was to try and establish a transcript feed for viewing DR
programs online, so you could watch the most audibly diverse shows on your
device and quickly refer to the complete transcript (not the CC for hearing
impaired because it scrubs the verbal grammar a bit and omits the vocal
punctuation that are extremely important for holding your own in a foreign
language), and change the playback, jump back and forth a few seconds, etc.,
the way one reads and rereads a passage in a text that catches their attention
or evades comprehension at first.

~~~
deanalevitt
That sounds really cool, actually. I rely on YouTube/Daily Motion for shows in
foreign languages but I struggle without a transcript due to dialect and
speed.

When there are subtitles, it helps immensely, so I imagine your idea would be
a benefit on top of this already helpful technique.

------
tutfbhuf
Why It’s So Hard to Learn French in Middle Ages

would also be an interesting article

~~~
_emacsomancer_
This is what I read at first - it may be difficult, but you pretty much have
to, because of the Normans.

As for French in middle age, learning languages after the critical period
window is generally tricky, it's not specific to middle age.

------
jhanschoo
I've found that one of the the reasons why learning a second language at
middle age is less effective, is because we already have a language we can
express ourselves in with great mastery.

For children and teenagers, learning the intricacies and irregularities of a
language is simply the only way they can learn to describe and apprehend the
world --- and themselves in new ways and ideas, and not get shamed for saying
something weird. Their quality of life is very highly correlated with how well
they learn a language, whereas the same cannot be said for those who have
already mastered one, or those who live in an environment that does not
actively use a language they are learning (hence why learning French in school
helps you so little, and why so few Japanese speakers are confident in their
English).

Barring immersion, one way to force yourself to learn another language more
effectively is to spend some time muting yourself in the languages you already
know and allow yourself only to express your thoughts in the language you are
learning.

~~~
rando444
Along these lines, my personal experience was that keeping a journal in
another language helped me improve my skills more than anything else.

------
hprotagonist
_> And I revel in small triumphs, like [...] that French Jews and Christians
use the familiar “tu” when addressing God._

English speakers do as well, but the form of address is so deprecated in
modern usage that it sounds _more_ formal instead of _less_. The English
familiar-you is _thou_ , and is/was only used with intimate relationships.

------
sisu2019
I actually think that for her not letting go of English is the biggest
obstacle. You won't be properly immersed if any significant part of your live
still happens in your native tongue.

In my student exchange year this was very noticeable: all of us Europeans
decided to not speak our native languages among ourselves while the large
group of Brazilians kept speaking Portuguese with each other. At the end of
the year the their English showed little improvement and they also did not
seem be well integrated with American friends and so on.

On the other hand, we came home barely able to speak our native languages.
That is a really weird feeling when you try to speak to your parents in German
and your brain just gives you English words and idioms.

So yeah, before you give up because of age try to not leave your brain an out
to be lazy. Brain, there is only one language now and you'd better learn it
quickly.

~~~
nemetroid
> I actually think that for her not letting go of English is the biggest
> obstacle. You won't be properly immersed if any significant part of your
> live still happens in your native tongue.

I agree. Despite Swedish and English being _very_ similar, my experience is
that native English speakers are among the slowest to pick up the language,
and most reluctant to use it.

------
La-ang
Languages require continuous practice. Immersing yourself in it is the only
way, or else just forget it, it won't happen. Every language in particular is
hard on the tongue depending on your linguistic background and upbringing. An
arabic speaking person would have challenges with french that are similar to
an english speaking or spanish one but still not the same. How? Well for
starters for example, such as in "de rien", the "e" vowel would threw off the
Arabic speaker but not the "R". With Spanish the "R" is a nightmare and also
the "e". For the English speaker the combining both brings pain and suffering.
This simple comparison is about not just the non existing tones and sounds
that one must master before uttering the correct word, but like I said before,
it rhymes with immersing oneself in the language. Learning the meaning of "de
rien" and using it correctly in a sentence is far from speaking it. Observing
its context, ways of pronouncing ( think state of mind, a word can be spoken
following many colors, something a non native lacks. as his or her speech
comes flat). I wish I could use other words to deliver what I must say, but I
hope you get the idea that Spoken language runs deeper than pronunciation and
mastering grammar. Another side note I wanna add is that occasional practice
is not gonna cut it. You wanna learn a language? Make it a daily activity.
Music, TV,trivial conversations etc..You'll realize you're stepping out of
your comfort zone, and that is a huge sign enough that you're building
actually something solid.

~~~
iscrewyou
> Languages require continuous practice. Immersing yourself in it is the only
> way, or else just forget it, it won't happen.

I wonder if this applies to programming. I have tried many times to pick up
Swift and Python. I am interested in it but I tend to get distracted by
something else and then completely forget the languages. I know any skill
requires constant practice. But I still feel like programming falls more
towards learning a different language.

------
sa-mao
I have been learning French from the very beginning of my life, because my
parents and everyone else considered that success in our country can only be
achieved if you are fluent in it. Now I can hold a descent French conversion
and I even did my engineering education in that language, but I never managed
to be fully fluent in it. French is an interesting language, and I really
enjoyed the countless Fantasy and sci-fi books I read, But I think I should
have invested my time in learning English instead.

------
boudewijnrempt
I recently realized I had learned late nineteenth-century French at high
school... I had French from 1982 to 1989. My teacher was in his sixties, and
being a friar, had never been to France, or even Brussels. He had been taught
by another friar, also in his sixties, back then. My teacher was taught in
1946, 1947, his teacher in 1900 or so. Even the audio materials were ancient,
dating back to the sixties... When I started reading BD's, I was in for a rude
surprise!

------
tmountain
As someone that's studied Spanish intensively for the last four years, I've
come to the conclusion that fluency is somewhat arbitrary and also that
learning a language should be a goal directed activity. Are you learning the
language to travel? Are you learning the language to read the classics? To
integrate with a family, etc? I have mental mile markers, which are mostly
comprised of situations where I've embarrassed myself in the past. In looking
back on these mile markers, it becomes obvious how far I've come, which should
feel great; however, I think most of us are attuned to focusing on our
deficits rather than our successes ("I should have been able to understand
that conversation I overheard, etc"). At the end of the day, I think of
language learning as a lifetime journey rather than a destination, and this
has allowed me to make peace with my deficits. I also think there's no
substitute in the world for slogging through hundreds of improvised
conversations, with our barbarisms in full view, and learning a little bit
each time. People idealize fluency as some kind of holy grail, but at the end
of the day, we're really just trying to communicate with each other, are we
not?

------
catcromar
There is actually a new app, just out of beta testing, called Fluent Forever
that uses strategically spaced repetition like anki, but flashcard creation is
way faster, plus there's audio built in. The problem with Duolingo, Babel,
etc. is that they are forcing you to use English in your study of the foreign
language. It's much closer to immersion to link pictures to the written and
audio vocab you are trying to learn. This obviously gets trickier the less
concrete your words are as you advance, but for way more info on this topic
[https://blog.fluent-forever.com/what-makes-fluent-forever-
di...](https://blog.fluent-forever.com/what-makes-fluent-forever-different-
new-app/) or, better yet, read the book Fluent Forever. The fluent forever
method is to learn the sound needed (phonemes), then basic vocab (600-1000
words), then start building sentences to get at the trickier material.

------
kazinator
The 49-year-old author is using stickers on her monitor for vocab and shocked
to find duplicates due to lapses.

Meanwhile, 48-year-old me has some 8300 Japanese entries in Anki, most of them
"mature".

A few months ago, someone _Japanese_ asked me, do you know how to read this
thing I received in a text message? Showed me the screen, where "逞しい"
appeared. At first I declined; no idea. Seconds later, though, I asked, can I
see that again? I stared at it for another moment or two and it kicked in:
hey, wait, that spells "takumashii": strong, sturdy, burly, and such. God
damn!

Repetition works.

I later checked into Anki: I had reviewed 逞しい 42 times. That would have
included a lot of lapses; words I don't lapse on don't get reviewed 42 times.

(For that word, I still didn't have the confidence to immediately recognize
it. This is probably because I have never studied that kanji, and have no
other word in my vocab which uses it. It's not in the jouyou list.)

------
man2525
Well, anecdotally, liaisons. Prior to a trip to the French part of Switzerland
last year, I practiced my French pronunciations instead of learning word
banks. I was able to hear much more than during my four semesters of college
level French a decade ago. But, those sentences where you leave the consonant
sound off the end of a word? Got me every time. I imagined that the word was
different, not the pronunciation. My friend I was visiting, on the other hand,
took the train to another city to participate in a French language course with
other foreigners learning French as a prerequisite to employment. Immersion:
Given that, his family speaking French fluently, living in a country where
French is spoken slowly, and seeing Italians and Germans make mistakes in
French, he could suss out the words much faster. I didn't feel outclassed,
just outpracticed.

------
basetop
Not sure how this is news. Learning anything, especially a new language, in
middle age difficult. What am I missing here?

~~~
comboy
I think it's one of those articles that gets upvoted because people like the
topic. I'm getting old - what do. Same as random stuff regarding privacy,
depression and google killing its projects.

So here we have generic discussion number #72, where we talk how neurogenesis
stops at a certain age but not really and how stuff can improve your cognition
but only if you're a mouse.

Also a good place to recommend The Brain That Changes Itself[1].

1\.
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/570172.The_Brain_That_Ch...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/570172.The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself)

------
dmayle
Strictly anecdatally (nb: intentional), I moved to France at 26, spent a total
of five years living in France before heading back to the US, have kept French
involved in my life, and now fifteen years later will have French people ask
me where in France I am from. Which is to say, that this article reads as
personal experience more than anything else. However, French is probably a
very unique case for study.

French poses a large number of difficulties for the native English speaker.
While the letters are the same, the sounds are subtly different (more precise,
less rounded than English), and there are at least three sounds that simply
don't exist in English (the two "u" sounds "ou" and "u", the nasal "n", the
guttural "r"). You most likely won't even be able to _hear_ the difference
between the two "u" sounds until after you've trained your ears.

Also, many sounds are simply elided from the words they are attached to.
Almost any word with an "s" loses that sound ("filles" and "fille" for
daughter(s) are both pronounced "fee"). A word like "comment" (how), where if
you were to pronounce the "ent" would be a very light nasal "n" sound, is
pronounced "co-mo".

Additionally, while the number of contractions in English is small, French has
a construct called the liaison (which means link), which causes a
combinatorial explosions in audible contractions. For example, the word
comment (pronounced "co-mo") and the word allez (pronounced "ah-lay") links to
become "co-mo-ta-lay". (added "T" sound).

This link is because normally, in French, two vowel sounds can not be
consecutive, and so the otherwise silent sound is re-injected to make the two
sounds flow together better. In cases where no sound has been elided, a new
letter is injected to keep the flow. "Has" is "a", and "he" is "il", but "has
he eaten?" gets an injected "t": "a-t-il mangé?". However, if adding the sound
for flow causes confusion, then the French will leave it out for no strict
reason. The example given to me was "trop aidé", which translates literally as
"too helped", because the link would make it sound like "too gay", which would
cause confusion.

So when you combine these (along with a number of complexities I haven't
mentioned yet (like there's a whole verb tense that only exists in writing,
but not spoken form), then French in specific conflicts with a lot of what you
learn for English, making it very difficult to learn as your second language.

~~~
mikeash
What you describe applies to any foreign language. The details differ, but
they’ll all have different spelling and pronunciation rules, different sounds,
different grammar, and all that.

I also learned French as an adult, first in school and then by immersion. I
also learned Mandarin, although not as well. I’m somewhat functional in it but
not at all fluent. French is really easy by comparison, coming from English.
You get a shitload of vocabulary for free. It uses the same alphabet with
minor differences in sounds. Grammar is different but with many familiar
concepts.

English is basically French mixed with Germanic languages and then baked for a
thousand years. English gives you a great foundation for French.

------
danieltillett
I think the subtle thing missed here is the effort required to speak a second
language well is not worth the effort. Just scraping by is good enough
especially if you still have access to your first language. Why speak French
well when for a fraction of the effort speaking poorly gets you 90% of the
return.

~~~
mattmanser
People who rely on wit and charm as their social lubricant need it.

I remember one place I worked had an exchange program between labs, we had a
French girl in ours who seemed very shy and withdrawn, but the colleague who'd
been to the French lab the year before (and was fluent in French) said she was
an absolute riot and the soul of any party in France.

~~~
saiya-jin
Very few french folks who live in France like to speak any other language,
regardless of their objective level. Those who went abroad are better in this.
The excuse is always the same - "my level is not so good" \- which is mostly
not true, they are perfectly understandable and speak fine. Maybe they don't
like their accent, but this is not any blocker for a good conversation.

Very personal experience for past 8 years - living 2km from French border,
surrounded by them day and night.

~~~
mattmanser
I was watching a basic italian video last weekend as I'm visiting Tuscany soon
and the teacher made an excellent point that vocab matters so much more than
grammar to begin with.

We'd all understand 'I the toilet need', and most languages have about 1000
everyday words, so just learn them and you'll be able to make yourself
understood, don't worry about the grammar too much to begin with, or not at
all if you're just travelling there.

Perhaps not so true of some languages, but certainly most Romantic and
Germanic ones.

------
KVFinn
Lazy language learning via Netflix:

[https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/](https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/)

The main feature is that it puts two different language subtitles on screen at
once (at the same time). Pretty cool way to get some extra practice in!

------
fooblat
As an expat trying to learn the language of my new country I have found I have
the most difficulty forming the vowel sounds I didn't grow up with.

I made something of a breakthrough when I finally found someone who could
listen to me and tell me what I'm doing wrong with my mouth and tongue
position.

------
vibrolax
I'm 60+. I've just finished 8 months of French integration for adult
immigrants in Québec in Gatineau (across the river from Ottawa). Five days per
week, 6 hours per day for 40 weeks. My wife (francophone) loves to hear me
make appointments and carry on practical interactions in French.

I can follow the news and participate in conversations with people in our
circle, but movies and street speech still elude me.

The thing I have enjoyed the most is forming friendships with other students
who don't speak English at all.

This region of Québec is perhaps less impatient with the struggles of people
learning French, with pockets of anglophones and francophones on the Quebec -
Ontario border.

------
soniman
She mostly follows english speakers on Twitter. Twitter is a useful way to
improve language skill because there is a "Translate" button right there, and
it's already part of your routine if it's in your feed. It's kind of funny she
mentions circling a word Le Monde and then looking it up, as if there weren't
much better ways of doing that online.

Because Twitter is such a good way to learn a language I've started an account
for learning a little Greek every day (you need the equivalent of a year of
Greek already).

[https://twitter.com/oink409/](https://twitter.com/oink409/)

------
raverbashing
The biggest difficulty, apart from the aging difficulties (which I think are
smaller than people think) is that you don't have time to immerse yourself in
the learning experience.

There is no reason if someone not making an effort won't learn a language when
they depend on it. Sure, they won't get all the grammar details, and will have
an accent, but they will learn to be conversational on it.

------
bluesmoon
Counter point by Susanna Zaraysky:
[https://createyourworldbook.com/livinginitalian/](https://createyourworldbook.com/livinginitalian/)

Susanna is fluent in several languages, and has written a few books. It's
always interesting getting her take on language learning at any age.

------
gerbilly
The main difficulty is that there are so many French words in the English
language, with slightly different meanings: so called false cognates.¹

1: [https://www.thoughtco.com/french-english-false-cognates-
faux...](https://www.thoughtco.com/french-english-false-cognates-faux-
amis-1364675)

~~~
glandium
faux amis in French, and that's obviously a problem for the opposite direction
as well.

------
deltron3030
It's easier if you approach French after you've learned Spanish, Italian or
Romanian. I'm fluent in Spanish, and despite not having learned French in a
dedicated way, I can read and understand almost everything. Spanish -> Catalan
-> French could even be a smoother route, move to Barcelona!

------
misiti3780
I just finished Babel No More[1] and everything in the books goes completely
against this article:

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Babel-No-More-Extraordinary-
Language/...](https://www.amazon.com/Babel-No-More-Extraordinary-
Language/dp/1451628269)

------
glandium
> And your peak level might not last.

If you don't use a language, you lose it. Yes, even your native language. It
does take longer because you know so much of it.

------
TheGrassyKnoll
"...being bilingual delays the onset of dementia by four and a half years..."

Wonder what knowledge of computer language(s) does for the dementia factor.

~~~
burnte
It accelerates it by 15 years per language, in my experience.

------
GnarfGnarf
My wife swears that when I say "en on in un" there is no way these are four
distinct sounds.

~~~
FeteCommuniste
Depending on what region someone comes from, "un" and "in" may indeed be the
same sound or very close: [https://www.cairn.info/revue-la-
linguistique-2001-2-page-33....](https://www.cairn.info/revue-la-
linguistique-2001-2-page-33.htm)

------
antirez
Because exactly like English is a phonetically hard language perhaps?

------
zahllos
I also have an anecdotal point, i.e. myself.

I'm an English-native speaker living in a French-speaking part of a country
with a number of national languages. I speak fluent French, and I suspect
Americans/British would call my German fluent too, but it isn't in my view. I
have small bits of other languages.

To qualify fluent French is hard without sounding like a "humblebrag", but, I
insist on doing French for everything locally and am often more comfortable in
French than my local friends are in English.

I feel like the author is both simultaneously making excuses and being overly
hard on herself. If the expectation is to learn French to the level of les
immortels de l'académie française... yes, I know she did not say that, but
this is a standard to which any non-native will always fall short. The
complaints she makes that there is ever-more-specific vocabulary, new gaps and
having words that simply don't stick in your mind are simply all part of my
daily life. It takes an enormous, persistent effort and continual use to
really get good at a language.

A possible difference between myself and the author (although I'm unsure,
given her past ability in Portuguese) is that I started learning French when I
was 9, had the good fortune to have one good French teacher for a year who
taught me everything I've ever needed for languages (learn grammar by heart,
as much vocab as you can and seek to immerse yourself as much as you can), I
worked on my languages outside of school and I moved to my current country in
my mid-20s. I don't have the fear of being wrong other people have mentioned.

The author writes the article as if French specifically is difficult, but the
only real point she makes that diverges from other languages is the existence
of l'académie française. I actually agree that French specifically is
difficult for English speakers (and my German speaking friends believe it is
difficult for them as well). Where I am there are large numbers of Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish immigrants and they integrate far more successfully and
learn better French, statistically, than other nationalities. Their languages
are all from the romance family and have closer structure and form than to
English or German. Concepts that are fairly rare in English, such as the
subjunctive (English: if I were bilingual) are very important in French. The
structure of a French sentence is typically different to how English sentences
are structured, such that a direct translation will almost always sound a bit
foreign. There are a large number of false friends. Gendered nouns are a
foreign concept to English speakers and the only way to get this right is to
learn them with the noun. Similarly, verbs can take à or de for their indirect
objects and again you can only learn this, it is almost impossible to guess.
These are still challenges for romance language natives, but less so.

However, on the side of the author being overly hard on herself, the reverse
of the above is also true. France is a comparatively monolingual country and I
have acquaintances there to whom I can only speak in French, as they never
pursued a foreign language. Not all French speakers who speak English have a
full mastery of it: I'm helping some of my local friends study for their exams
and some of them have extreme difficulty switching out of the French way of
thinking. Those that do still trip up on the little details, like "I am in the
train" because "I am on the train" translated into French means literally on
top of the roof, and "I am thinking to write on hackernews" instead of "I am
thinking of writing on hackernews" because the gerund does not exist in
French; the infinitive form takes its place. I am not surprised to hear the
French often think they are bad at French - in my native country, many people
are very bad at English.

Outside the author's specific problems and the particular difficulty of French
for English speakers, the difficulty of learning languages for English native
speakers is due to the hegemony of English language and culture. There is a
far greater incentive for others to learn English. My local friends hate films
dubbed in French (actually so do I, it's usually very poor quality) so they
grew up with English films with subtitles in French (VO instead of VF). They
listen to English music and tag their photos with English words they like on
instagram. The efforts of l'académie française to introduce quotas for French
music ([https://www.franceinter.fr/societe/quel-quota-pour-la-
chanso...](https://www.franceinter.fr/societe/quel-quota-pour-la-chanson-
francaise-a-la-radio)) and promote the French language are in conflict with
the fact that, at least where I am, masters level courses and above are taught
in English and many good jobs either require it or list it as an advantage.
For a young European today, learning English opens up a lot of opportunities
and there is an enormous amount of easy, enjoyable material from which to
learn.

I've no idea how good the author's French truly is, but if she's understanding
a first aid course I am going to guess pretty good. In my view she is being
overly defeatist and unfair on herself. I have no doubt it is easier to start
young, but I also believe that setting too much store the studies she mentions
("studies say I'm losing my ability to learn languages, my French is not
perfect, well, I should give up") is unhelpful. If in 20 years she still lives
in France, I think she would regret it if she stopped trying to improve now.

------
deadmetheny
Well, there goes my dream of joining the French Foreign Legion.

------
usr1987
why would you want to learn french? They are dying society and language!

