this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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It's never too late to learn a language but it's a bit of an uphill battle, and you're not going to learn it by just watching shows. You need to practice regularly and understand the grammar and sentence structure. You also have to speak it with other people to get feedback, you can't only learn to listen.
It's about brain plasticity and 25 is kind of the same as 45...
So they can learn French in an "anything is possible if you try" kind of way, but realistically unless they straight up move to France and completely dive into it, it's going to be a massive struggle to get to where they can even understand French shows without English subtitles.
Like, at a certain point people should realistically evaluate the amount of work and payoff they get from stuff.
Marrying a French person and wanting to learn their language? Yeah. That's probably worth the work.
Wanting to watch French TV without reading? Not so much
Yeah, no.
This is bullshit.
(Especially the stuff about brain plasticity and learning capacity)
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/review/30/neural-plasticity-dont-fall-for-hype/
Can you please just edit and rephrase so its obvious as to what direction you are indicatingn in terms of BS?
Sure, but just to be clear, it's about the brain plasticity and diminishing returns. That stuff just isn't true.
Here's what the British academy has to say on the subject:
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/review/30/neural-plasticity-dont-fall-for-hype/
Sounds like youβre agreeing with GP that βitβs all babbleβ.
That example about London cabbies is actually one of my favorite studies...
But changes to certain structures in the brain isn't what I was talking about. And I've never heard of that being categorized as neuroplasticity.
Which makes it even weirder that the article is about how we should differentiate more.
So let's stay specific?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2021.666851/full
But that study was done on people aged 65+ for 11 weeks? I mean, sure, they didn't measure any significant changes to the brain, but that doesn't preclude changes forever. 11 weeks is not long to practice a language
Learning a language has benefits beyond that, it can be it's own reward to have dedicated time to something and have it pay off and it is good for brain health. Bilingual people suffer less from dementias.
Pretty sure that's people who were bilingual their whole lives, not people who learned another language later in life. It's about how the brain deals with thinking in both languages.
Once you're older it's the same benefit as sudoku, which is still something