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Unrelated but I love your username

There was an old study showing that London taxi drivers develop enlarged hippocampi, the part of the brain used for navigation, to deal with the labyrinthian London streets. The growth continued over several years even in mature adults as they used those navigation and memorization abilities. I'd like to see a study of the brain of an adult prospective language learner over a long period to see if any similar plasticity exists for the brain's language centers.

(I'll admit I'm horribly biased. I was exceptional at picking up new languages as a teen, but let that knowledge decay into nothingness as an adult. I'd hate to have wasted such a useful talent.)

This should be taken with a grain of salt, just as yours and op, but neuroplasticity makes arguments like yours shaky (well well well if this isn't gonna turn out to be our old friend dialectics). If children just had a special environment, you'd find the physiological countepart. So unless it's controlled for otherwise, you can't make a one directional proof out of it

Random addition to your post...

There's early/limited studies suggesting the drug valproate, which is used for bipolar and epilepsy sometimes, can re-open the perfect pitch acquisition capabilities of the human brain even if the individual is no longer an infant and has aged past the language acquisition stage of childhood development.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/

Different use of it in an 8 year old girl with language regression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11230735/

This age period is shockingly young; I don't remember exactly but iirc it's less than one year old.

Anecdotally, that sounds hard to believe to me, because I moved from South Korea (which has the same sound ambiguity) to the US at the age of 11 and have no problem at all distinguishing between the two sounds. All of my Korean friends that I had back in middle school also had no issues, even though none of them were born in the US. On the contrary, I've been told at times that I speak Korean with an obvious western accent.

I think the age was around 9 months where some where the majority of neurons get discarded since they're not useful and babies can use them to identify different lemurs for example.

I still think this is not the whole picture. People in their 60s learn languages faster than teenagers because they have more "surface area for knowledge to stick to" if you know where I'm going.

Not to take anything away from babies learning languages. They have to learn to use their tongue, vocal chords and identify sounds at the same time so them being able to use grammar at 2y with vocabulary is as insane feet. Babies also have dedicated regions of the brain for speech but then again, so do adults.

I feel the post makes a valid point. It's harder for the baby to learn a language since they don't know any. An adult in the same situation would most likely be faster because majority of the skills needed to speak a language are already there.

About the accuracy of sounds it'll take some very careful training of the adult like people do with babies. On top of that, I wouldn't underestimate the brain, over a long time such as a year of full immersion the brain is capable of picking up on a lot of things as long as the adult pays attention.

It really amazed me to learn that Spanish uses "b" and "v" somewhat interchangeably.
Personally, I find myself struggling with the difference between the g and ğ sounds, even after somebody with a native language that has both explained it to me.

I can't imagine this could possibly generalize enough to significantly counter the original post's claim. Take one little slice out of it, sure, but not much else.

As I've been told, they* tend to be more polite to you if you make an attempt at least, considering it a gesture of respect for the country you're in. They may roll their eyes at how bad an attempt it is, but it's still a credit.

There is a similar phenomenon in Germany, where we may switch to English, not necessarily because we're annoyed at your bad German, but simply because we consider it more efficient or courteous to engage with people in English. Maybe the French have similar reasons.

I've caught myself in that reflex too: I learned English from the start of primary school, consume a lot of English media, speak English with international colleagues and consider myself fairly fluent. If you struggle with German, I'll be quick to offer using a language we're both good at because it makes things easier for you. That's not a lack of appreciation, it's an offer of convenience.

On the other hand, if you wish to practice your German, I'm more than happy to help. I get the impression that many generally are willing to humour you, provided we have the time for it. If you're ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions, odds are we'll switch to English to speed things up. But if I have the time, I'll gladly listen to your German and offer corrections and explanations.

*Possibly just a specific subset of localities or businesses; I can't give a first-hand account nor obviously make a blanket statement about a country of ~68 million people (1.66 times the population of california, for comparison).

I learned French in France. French rudeness is overstated. In Paris, in high-stress situations, yeah, they don't have time to listen to you stumble through a communication that could be completed in a fraction of the time with greater accuracy in English. But outside of Paris, or in more working class neighborhoods, in mom-and-pop shops, you can get all the practice you need. Stay away from Franprix, and go to the corner bodega, and you can strike up a friendly convo.

I also found that French people express appreciation by correcting you. They assume if you're putting in the effort to learn, you want to know when you make a mistake, and how you should improve. Constant correction can be mildly discouraging to me, but once I learned to take it in the spirit it was delivered, my emotions stopped hindering my communications.

Funny, every complaint I read online about the French seems to apply much better to Germany. But I've never heard the same criticism IRL for some reason

Same story here with Spanish. I was in South America for all of two weeks. But the smiles and help when I tried to use Spanish for anything more than beer and bathrooms keeps me going back to Duolingo.

I had a similar positive experience in Spain and Morocco. Tangier is very close to Spain so most of the locals know Spanish.

I would always start conversations in Spanish. Most of the time the person I was talking to would appreciate my attempt and switch to English. In Tangier I talked to a street peddler for over 15 minutes while friends were in a store. I attempted to speak in Spanish but he preferred English. He just wanted to chat.

Genie was locked up at 20 months old. I don't think they locked her up because of her mental illness. They locked her up because of their mental illness. I reference Genie because she's the most documented "wild child," which is a completely disgusting term.

Language is universal to all humans, even though it is multifaceted. Humans also have massive brains that require extra care to bring to fruition in comparison to other animals. Language is one of those things. You can learn other languages at any age, but you first need learn a language.

I remember reading about a deaf colony in (IIRC) Guatemala that was initially populated by deaf adults who had learned sign language as adults or older children. The original residents had children, and the children developed the sign language into a more complex “full” language with more developed grammar and syntax. Children’s ability to learn language goes beyond their higher neuroplasticity.

I'm don't even able to tie my shoes as an adult

What have you ever met a 5-year-old sure they might not be able to have deep philosophical conversations with you but they are very effective at communicating.

There's different levels of "fluency". Roughly summing up the CEFR^[1]^ model:

A1: Can ask and answer simple questions
A2: Can hold simple conversations
B1: Can talk about interests or events
B2: Can understand the main ideas of more complex or subject-specific texts
C1: Can use language flexibly without much searching for expressions
C2: Can easily speak and comprehend virtually everything in the target language

C1 is probably what I'd consider fluency, and looking at my own peers and language, some adults don't even fit the criteria for C2 in their own native language.

CEFR doesn't entirely map to native language development well, since it assumes fluency in the speaker's native tongue and a certain ability to grasp more complex topics in the firsts place, where a child would still have to develop the mental faculties.

Still, attempting to describe native language development in CERF, at age 5, children are expected to "have mastered all basic grammatical markers at this age and should be speaking in grammatically correct sentences most of the time"^[2]^, which I would consider somewhere between A2 and B1.

If the mental development for fluency in your native language are present, I do think that comprehensive immersion in a target language for five years, supported by helpful natives, can bring you a long way to fluency. The Goethe-Institute estimates that learning German will take approximately 600-750 hours^[3]^ to reach C1, though it bases that estimate on its own dedicated language courses. Investing an average 3h of learning the language per week for five years would put you at 780. With additional support and practice outside of lessons, I think you could do with much less than that.

[1] Wikipedia: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages, accessed 2024-09-02
[2] Speech and Language for Kids: 5-Year-Old Speech Checklist, https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/what-speech-and-language-skills-should-my-5-year-old-have/, accessed 2024-09-02
[3] Goethe-Institut: Frequently Asked Questions, Section "Our Courses", Question "How long does it take to learn German?", https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/m/sta/lon/kur/faq.html#accordion_toggle_6206750_2, accessed 2024-09-02