On: How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months

[wheels]

These things assume that language learning abilities are roughly universal, and that languages within the same vague groups are roughly as hard as one-another.

German, for instance, turns out to be a lot harder than Spanish, which I'd learned when I was younger. I've been in Germany for 7.5 years, have had girlfriends I only spoke German to, speak German with most of my friends ... and I still struggle with getting the grammar right.

Once again I find Tim's take on things horribly over-simplifying. It seems that he makes rather audacious points by redefining words (e.g. "work", "fluency") and then drawing a bunch of conclusions based on those redefinitions.

[chris123 → wheels]

I agree on the "language learning abilities" comment. For some people, learning a second (or more) language is easy; for others it's hard.

[jbellis → wheels]

> German, for instance, turns out to be a lot harder than Spanish, which I'd learned when I was younger

I'd guess it's the "learned when I was younger" part that made the difference.

[davidw → jbellis]

I studied German when I was younger (middle school/high school), and Italian a bit later (college), and Italian is definitely easier (though no language is easy).

[wheels → jbellis]

The difference was Spanish at 14, German at 21. From a language learning perspective 14 is already past the age where there's much innate.