Age no longer an excuse

We’ve all heard the excuse that you’re too old to learn a language. Well, that’s just simply not true.

There’s an interesting post here that dispels many of the myths you may have heard of about learning another language as an adult. The major one of these being that there is actually no decline in the ability to learn as people get older. So unlike many people think, the brain’s capacity to remember vocabulary does not lessen as you age. In fact, if you use your brain to learn new things as an adult, including another language, studies now suggest that your brain actually gets stronger and has a better ability to retain information.

Watching children acquire language is an amazing thing. But if you think about it, it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years for them to master it – much as it takes an adult years to master a new language. The two major benefits they have are that they are immersed in the language – think of how fast you’d learn French if you lived in Paris for a few years? And, they have relatively few inhibitions!

So, where does this leave us oldies? Well, aside from moving overseas for an extended period of time (which is always a great option, by the way!) the best thing we can do to help us learn a new language at home is to lose our adult sensibilities and jump right in that deep end. Don’t worry about looking silly or making mistakes. Go out and practice as much as you can, and if you’ve got young ones in your life, use them as inspiration!