my school said i was too dumb to take a language. fine by me i said, less homework, more free periods

I plan to force my kid to learn Japanese and Spanish when he's young. He'll thank me for it later

I wish that other languages were in the curriculum in elementary school rather than high school, or perhaps if we had both?

[quote]Children remember stuff and stick to stuff better.[/quote] This is actually false. Adults learn faster as they can better understand abstract concepts such as grammar. Warning: Long winded exposition[spoiler]Children internalize pronunciation better, but this has more to do with the fact that adults have a harder time breaking away from their preconceptions of what "language should sould like". A simple example is have an adult and a child make "animal sounds". They can both do equally well, but have them pronounce a new word and the children do better. Another example is that people can often lose their accent when they sing if they try to match the "sound" of the song rather than focusing on the lyrics. [b] [/b] We also hold children to a lower standard. If a seven year old kid walked up to you and said.[quote]I am Joe. I am learn English one year. I happy meet you.[/quote]you'd likely think "Damm, this kid's pretty good for only learning for a year. By contrast, if a 35 year old guy walked up to you and said the exact same thing you'd likely think, "Damn, a year? This guy's English is shit." [b] [/b] This is also reflected in textbooks. Ones designed for children move MUCH slower. For example, at our school we don't start teaching children past tense until they've been learning for just under 3 years (roughly 528 in class hours). In the adult program we start in less than a year and a half (give or take 252 in class hours). [b] [/b] That said, there are three advantages to learning a language early: 1) the head start 2) training the brain to think in another language makes it easier to aquire other languages later. 3) parents For the second point, think of it like sports. A footballer and tennis player are both athletes, but would likely suck at the other sport because they're focusing on different muscle groups. Someone who plays both, however, might more easily pick up a third sport, like basketball, than someone who only plays one sport. Your brain in the same way. For example, English is primarily processed in the left hemisphere of the brain. This is true of speaking, reading and writing, as our language uses an alphabet of phonetic symbols. Mandarin, however, utilizes the right hemisphere to process both the tones when speaking and to read and write characters as they are more abstract and not one for one representations of the spoken language. Learning early is effectively like cross training from the start rather than focusing on one sport then picking up another later. [b] [/b] As for parents, kids don't need to be self-motivated because there's someone there to push them. Adults don't have that luxury.[/spoiler] On a related note, learing a second language can actually help fight the onset of dementia in old age. Warning: Long winded advice[spoiler]Our German teacher always told us, "You gotta think in German." She was right, but that's actually a pretty advanced technique in that you need a fair bit of the language to start. In my experience, people tend to pick up words in their own language (for example, if they read it in a news article) faster than words in another language, so I came up with a philosophy of my own. Try "Expanding your English" to include new words. For example, "cool", "cold" "chilly" can all effectively have the same meaning (albiet with subtle differences). So, why not add [i]lěng[/i] (冷) to that list. Tell your brain, "It's not Chinese, it's English!" Yeah, I can be a bit weebish (the intermixing of language), but if it helps you internalize, why not? It makes things faster as well. Instead of the process of huhn → chicken → 🐔 it's huhn → 🐔 ← chicken or more simply huhn → 🐔 And this directly relates what our German teacher meant when she said "You need to think in German." You need to take that extra processing step through English out of the equation.[/spoiler]

I’m willing to bet that your 3 year old self would incoherently try and argue with you.

I’m trying to teach myself German, since my career necessitates learning a foreign language. I’m also dabbling in French, Spanish, and Ukrainian, but those are for fun. Only Deutsch is serious. [spoiler]Sorry, all out of salt.[/spoiler]

If you’re trying to learn a language, change your phone to that language. I have my phone set to Spanish and it helps and occasionally forces me to read and pay attention. It’s very helpful

It’s not a problem you see they are currently developing technology that will let you learn ,understand and speak a language instantly You are probably doubting this Well google translate is the beta test to this technology