age and learning

[firstyears]

hey everyone . how are you doing ?
I was wondering how old you guys are and at what age did you start learning a new language ?
any advice about the age to start learning new languages ?
im thinking about teaching French to my kids but i kinda think they are too young for that. please give me your ideas. thanks

[Cèid Donn]

Myself, I was 13 when I started learning German in middle school.

I don't have an opinion on how early to start, but as a teacher, I have worked with bilingual kids in elementary schools, most of whom are bilingual by the time they start kindergarten. Since most of these kids' first language is Spanish, I have to provide them with support with learning English and the key there is structure and consistency. At home most of these kids use only or mostly Spanish so when they are exposed to English, those two things are very important, along with lots of repetition, lots of realistic expectations and lots of positive reinforcement. Kids are learning machines and they do fine when they get the support they need to learn, as long as the adults around don't screw things up for them.

[tangleweeds]

I was wondering how old you guys are and at what age did you start learning a new language ?

59 now, first learned a little French before starting school, studied French & Latin simultaneously all the way through middle-high school, then studied Japanese at university for a few years much later when I was 35. Then I started learning languages again when I was in my mid 50s.

any advice about the age to start learning new languages?

As with music, ASAP? Can't start any sooner than now? Of course for very young children both to be approached gently, but for the rest of us...

im thinking about teaching French to my kids but i kinda think they are too young for that. please give me your ideas.

My mother, who spoke French, taught me some for a few months before a trip to Europe. I was 3, and I've never forgotten any of it.

[rdearman]

This isn't going to help you, but I started when I was 40+. However, there are a number of forum members who have taught their children other languages while they were learning. It would be something interesting to do with your child, so I say go for it.

[Kraut]

Stanislav Dehaene's last book would be the best source to get to the latest findings and applying them to child learning

How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain

https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Learn-Bra ... B07S1K4TB2

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=16026

[Deinonysus]

I was just shy of 30 when I started learning German which was the first language that I learned to a useable level.

My daughter is 1 and 3/4 and she has picked up a few French words from hearing her mom teach hear French classes from home on Zoom. She doesn't know exactly what they mean, but she will recognize words like « bonjour », « oui », and « merci » and repeat them when she hears them. In particular, she always says « bonjour » to mommy's students on the computer, or to mommy's work computer even when it isn't in use. So she has learned that it's some sort of greeting based on context, although on the other hand maybe she thinks it's the word for computer.

You didn't say how young your kids are but I'm assuming they're too young to plop them down in front of conjugation charts. But you can expose them to the language, and if you speak French yourself it would be even better if you could speak it to them. They'll start getting familiar with the words and sounds.

[Iversen]

In my childhood school in Denmark started at 6 or 7 years - I was born in December (and my mother was sick and tired of hearing me complain about the infantile behaviour of the kids in my Kindergarten) so I was sent there at age 6½. Nowadays there is a kindergarten class, but I think the rule there is that the kids aren't allowed to learn anything - just play with their teacher. We had English from around third class, so I would have been 8½ when English classes started. And I didn't hear much English before that. I think German followed a couple of years later, and later on Latin and French.

As for home studies: I started to study Italian from a text book when I was around 10 or so, and soon after also Spanish when I found a textbook by the same people (Kirchheiner). But I didn't hear much Italian before I went on an interrail rampage at the age of 18. However the Italians understood what I said right from the start, and it didn't take long before I also understood them - so my home study can't have been totally off the mark. As for Spanish I only went to Spain in the midt 70s when I was around 22 - I wanted Franco to die first. But then it was the same story: I didn't speak continuously in Spanish down there, but when I said something people understood me - and a few days later I also understood what the Spaniards said. Besides I could understand Low German at least as well as most Germans because I watched Talk op Platt on NDR for years (Platt has since then disappeared for good from NDR so new generations will never have that opportunity).

Then I went to the university and studied French and also followed courses in several other languages - but funnily enough not Spanish because the Spanish sub-institute was overwhelmed by red-eyed crazy fans of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara who wanted to learn all about Latin America (more than the Spanish language itself, I suppose). On the other hand I got courses in Old French and Old Occitan and Catalan and Italian and Romanian and Old Norse - and Latin of course, since I needed a supplementary exam to be allowed to study any Romance language back then.

Then I didn't study languages for 25 years, but kept some of my languages alive by watching TV and (not least) travelling a lot.

I restarted my studies in 2008 when I was 55 years old, just before a trip to Romania and Moldova. So Romanian was the first language I tried to revive, and after that I learnt Portuguese from scratch - but it wasn't too difficult since I already knew some Spanish. And a few years after I did my first timid attempts to study Modern Greek and Russian, using books which I had bought in the early 80s, but (almost) not used. I also learnt Dutch (and later Afrikaans) from scratch, using my Low and High German as crutches. And in recent years I have engaged in studying five Slavic languages plus Albanian and periodically also Irish concurrently, but without getting to speak any of them fluently.

And then you may ask: is that because I'm getting old and senile? Well, I don't think so, but it is hard to learn to think and speak in a language without listening to it, and I have been listening much more to music than to speech for at least five years now (dating from 2015 where I decided to transfer my music collection from cassettes to files and had to reorder and supplement the collection). For a time I also spent a lot of time on revising my old compositions - music being the culprit once more! However I have come quite far with the written languages so I don't think you need to order a bed in an old people's home for me yet. Except for my lamentable underperformance with Slavic speech, where I never have established the level of exposure which I had for my Romance and Germanic languages, I think I'm as efficient learner as I was forty years ago - also because I have refined my wordlist system and I have Google Translate to help me produce bilingual texts. And Greek: well, it is on the tip of my tongue because I have visited the country several times, and each time I have been able to communicate partly in Greek after 2-3 days or so. I guess my next trip there will be monolingual - whether or not the Greek accept it (they willy-nilly HAVE to, otherwise I won't buy anything from them!).

But first we have to get through the corona pandemy.

I hope that's enough to answer the question ... otherwise I can easily add a couple of lines more.

And to the OP: just go ahead trying to teach your kids French. They'll tell you if they don't like the idea.

[lildreamsnatcher]

I can't really remember - I think I was 6 or 7 years old when I started learning English at school. I had a bit of French when I was 10 and both German and Latin in high school. I only got far with English and Latin though, but only because I was determined to learn them and did that mostly on my own, basically. Schools in Poland are geared towards teaching how to ace a test, not how to use the language in real life situations, unfortunately .

[kelvin921019]

We learn English as early as at the age of 4 as it's part of our education system. Of course kids are too young to grasp difficult concepts in any language so the approach / material would be different from those for adults like us.

For me and for many years English had been that boring and tedious subjects that I can never perform well at school. It was until I reached like 16-17 what I start to explore the world of internet and I become very grateful for my English education. It's at that moment my English really took off. So, teach your children a new language when they can absorb most, they will thank you one day