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This article focuses on grammar, and the conclusions there seem plausible to me. But a related claim is that it's much harder to lose a foreign accent when speaking if exposed to the language past age 13 or so, and there I'm leaning toward thinking that this is true.

In reading and writing, I'm much better in English than in French. I bet I could pass for a native writer in the former (or fail to do so primarily because my spelling is TOO accurate ;-). But when speaking, I have a pretty obvious accent in English, despite spending years being immersed in it, and working on my pronunciation.

My spoken French, by virtue of starting a few years earlier (and being mercilessly drilled on pronunciation), is better, despite never having reached as high a level of immersion, and having lost quite a bit of my vocabulary.




With respect to pronunciation, I think it’s a trait different than language learning(grammar, vocabulary) itself. For example, I learnt Japanese(not fluent) when I was 25, and people in class were surprised at how good my pronunciation was. Same with when I learnt German(limited proficiency) 3 yrs ago. Recently. I taught myself to sing a few French songs. When people listen to me sing, they get surprised that I don’t speak french.

Perhaps I have an advantage in this area, as I grew up speaking three different unrelated languages, introducing me to wider range of phonetic sounds very early in life.


I've been told recently by my kid's speech therapist that if kids don't pickup how to properly pronounce harder-to-say sounds like L and R up to 14 yo, they'll probably never learn it. Which leads to the same conclusion, because I guess learning an accent is basically learning how to modify the way you make speech sounds.




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