It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
nytimes.com
It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
1–10 of 339 posts
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#2Read 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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#3Learning 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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#4This 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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#5I 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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#6This 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…
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.”
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#7I'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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#8Learning 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…
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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#9I 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.
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.
Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age
#10As 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.