Are some people just unable to become fluent in a foreign language?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨housewife@feddit.uk⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I’m from Vietnam. I’ve been in the UK for 10 years now. When I met my English husband 13 years ago at 19 I knew 0 English. We communicated using machine translation. So that’s when I started learning English. Fast forward to present day after immersion, living in an English speaking country, formal study, etc. and I’d say my writing and listening (understanding) are good, but my speaking and reading are still bad. I kind of gave up on trying to become fluent at this point.

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TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What do you define as fluency? you literally wrote this in English!

are you talking accent reduction? it’s irrelevant to fluency for the most part. that’s a cultural mark of power, that’s it. if you want to give up some of your identity to blend in better you’d probably work at it more. i bet you have more integrity than that.

what are the issues with reading? there can be many reasons to struggle with reading in any language, not just foreign ones.

anyway, if there’s a “too old for language” or “just some people cant”, you at 32 writing on and english forum, you aint it chief. you’re doing fine the way you are 👑 just keep living with English in your life as much as you want it to be, enjoy learning new things when it’s enjoyable, and go easy on yourself when it’s not

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floo@retrolemmy.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Some people are barely fluent in their native language

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- TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  are you talking about a disability or are you making an extremely ill informed statement on linguistics
  
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  - Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    They are stating an observation.
    
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cacti@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
No, pretty much everybody is able to acquire another language unless they have a neurological disorder that makes them unable to acquire any language at all.

You don’t need to be young or be a child to acquire a language either. The critical period hypothesis is a causation-correlation fallacy at best. It points out many issues directly related to traditional language learning methods and not acquisition of another language at an older age; the issues it points out are the resultant bad pronunciation, spelling errors, grammatical errors upon trying to output etc.

These do not result from “improper age” or “an inability to learn another language”, they result from how society as a whole has accepted “formal study” and “language courses” as the best ways to acquire a language, which they are definitely not.

Language acquisition is achieved first and foremost by comprehensible input. Hundreds and thousands of hours of comprehensible input. This can consist of any type of content a person enjoys watching, as long as it’s language dense, easy to understand at the start and slowly harder going forward. A good figure to aim for is 10,000 hours of this.

Production of language, or output, is not beneficial to the learner, especially at the first few thousands of hours where it can permanently damage the learner’s ability. The reason for early outputting being so detrimental to language acquisition is that as the learner doesn’t yet completely know how the target language sounds, and they don’t understand grammar rules intuitively yet because of the lack of input, anything they force out will in all likelihood be incorrect and they will unconsciously reinforce the incorrect grammar and pronunciation they just outputted.

So the best way to get to fluency is by doing as much input as possible and as much no output as possible. This is also usually called immersion learning, but it just goes off of this principle.

You did mention immersion in your text, but considering that you live in an English speaking country you most definitely were forced to output early to at least survive, which damaged your speaking skills. The reason your reading may be bad is that you may not be reading enough English. If you’re talking about language courses when you say “formal study“ and not skimming through a grammar textbook just for an easier time with immersion, which you most likely are, that may have harmed your perception of how English sounds too due to toxic input (the incorrect speech/writing of other learners).

Tatsumoto‘s website is pretty useful for more information and resources on input-based learning. It is primarily for Japanese but as language acquisition doesn‘t differ from one language to another it doesn‘t matter and you can just skip the Kanji-specific parts. I would just think twice about joining their community as they are pieces of shit though, but the website is really well made for a complete language acquisition guide which only uses Libre tooling.

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- LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  TBH that sounds like saying anybody can become “fluent” in calculus if they just apply themselves. In my experience that’s just not the case. People have different aptitudes. You might be right that with sufficient motivation and unlimited time, anyone without a neurological disorder could theoretically learn a language, but in a real-life context where people have a lot of other concerns and responsibilities going on, I think some people are reasonably able to do that and others not so much.
  
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  - cacti@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The problem with your first point is that in the case of language acquisition, there is no “aptitude” for it. The process of language acquisition is more or less the exact same in every person, the only exceptions being people with literal neurological disorders. And you don’t really need unlimited time for this process. It takes around 1.5 years of immersion at 18 hours per day to reach 10,000 hours, 3 years at 9 hours per day, and 6 years at 4.5 hours per day. The trick for reaching the 10,000 hours is just actively consuming compelling TL content whenever you’re free and would normally consume native language content (active immersion), and then listening to them once again while on your way to work or brushing your teeth or something (passive immersion). As an example for compelling content, what drew me to learn English in the first place was mostly popsci and video game content that I was really interested in and that were simply not available in Turkish. I would also recommend having smaller weekly goals instead of one gigantic goal that you are likely to stress over (like the 10,000 hours).
    
    And the concerns you list are mainly time & motivation related, but the OP is asking if some people are literally worse at/incapable of acquiring a foreign language, which is not the case at all.
    
    The guide I mentioned in my comment covers more topics than I could ever fit in a comment, including different types of immersion (passive and active), different types of active immersion (intensive and free flow), SRS, software, other helpful websites, techniques and much more so I would just recommend giving it a read if one decides on diving into language acquisition.
    
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  - blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I mean, this is a valid point, but framed negatively.
    
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- TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  most people dont understand languages. it’s sad and i dont understand why they don’t understand. thanks for some sanity in here.
  
  the barrier to OPs husband sounds like lack of interest / hope.
  
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- avattar@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Really interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
  
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psycho_driver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The older you are when you begin trying to learn a foreign language the harder it is. Like almost everything, actually.

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- Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  While there is a point where yes it’s gonna be hard no matter what, I’m learning a new language in my 30s and finding it relatively easy. As an adult you already have a large vocabulary and know what more complex words mean, you just need to learn their translation.
  
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  - BassTurd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Same. I started learning French from English, and my experiences from software development have made learning a new language easier. I also took Spanish almost 20 years ago, and while I don’t speak it, I have a better understanding of how languages are structured so learning congregations is easier since I understand the concept better. Perhaps the specific words I’m learning don’t stick in memory as easy as a child, but learning a new language is like 30% vocab and 70% sentence structure and congregation. The hard part is the “logic”, if you will.
    
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  - ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    May I ask which language you’re learning? I’m curious about Japanese and Arabic (Egyptian Dialect). But both seem really tough to learn.
    
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I don’t have a source but I’ve read that young children can learn up to 4 languages at once, without mixing them up, before they show any sign of strain.
  
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  - DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Switzerland has 4 official languages
    
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KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s important to keep in mind that the difficulty of learning a language is based on the languages you already speak. Finnish is a good example of this, as while Finnish children are able to learn it quickly due to its regularity, English speakers may struggle with how different it is (especially with some almost entirely unfamiliar concepts, such as the partitive case, which has no direct English equivalent)

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- Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Or if your native language is similar to the one you’re trying to learn. If you speak Danish, learning Norwegian is super easy, learning Swedish is easy.
  
  If you’re Italian, speaking Spanish is easy, writing French is easy (even though actually speaking it is harder than Spanish given the strongly different pronunciation).
  
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Neuromancer49@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Chiming in with more context, my PhD was in neuroscience and I worked in a language lab. As others have stated, there is a critical window for learning a language. The biology behind it is fascinating.

As early as about 9 months of age, your brain begins to decide what speech sounds are important to you. For example, in Japanese the difference between /r/ and /l/ sounds doesn’t matter, but in English it does. Before 9 months, most babies can tell the difference between the two sounds, but babies living in Japanese-speaking environments (without any English) LOSE this ability after 9ish months!

Language is more than just speech sounds, though. Imagine all these nuances of language - there are critical moments where your brain just decides to accept or reject them, and it’s coded somewhere in your DNA.

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- Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  i’ve never understood this, i’m slightly older than 9 months and i’ve been perfectly able to pick up new sounds, and people learn new languages all the time…
  
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  - phdepressed@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Perfectly? In a language system different than your own. English to French/Spanish doesn’t require these sounds. English to like Thai or Chinese has a lot.
    
    People learn new languages because you can get the ability back with training (hooray neurplasticity) but it is more difficult and takes longer.
    
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  - Neuromancer49@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Have you tried learning Japanese / English after learning the other? I studied Japanese and learned how to pronounce the /r/ in Japanese correctly.
    
    For some people, the difficulty is less in production, and more in interpretation for someone who is native Japanese speaking and later learned English.
    
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- gramie@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Conversely, Japanese people learn to tell the difference between an “o” vowel held for shorter or longer periods, a skill that I find incredibly difficult even though I lived in Japan for 7 years.
  
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Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think when people are learning some new skill, eventually they reach a proficiency where they stop actively working on improving. Instead, they’ll transition from “improving the skill” to “applying the skill”.

Practice does not make “perfect”. Practice makes permanent.

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- Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  That’s a really good point a lot of people miss. There are a lot of right answers in this post, different people, different results; age; etc. But if you don’t level up the challenge and make sure you are meeting those challenges correctly then you will stagnate. True for everything
  
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  - Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I see it ALL the time, across MANY domains.
    
    Language, music, golf, programming, driving, competitive gaming, etc etc.
    
    It’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s WAY more effort to push for improvement. Once you’ve gotten to the point where your skills are serving your needs, is that what you want to invest your finite energy into? Maybe not. God knows I’m not actively trying to improve on every skill I have. Very few. Most of my things (music, games, sport) are just to have fun. If you’re having fun you’re probably not really improving, and that’s ok.
    
    But when people lament that they’ve hit a wall on a skill, in my experience it’s this effect, MUCH more than any other.
    
    I think if OP reflected on their already MASSIVE achievement of becoming functional in another language, they’d likely conclude that their skills rapidly increased up until the point that they had a functional level of the skill, and then hit a plateau once they subconsciously began expending less active effort on improvement.
    
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Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Like with any other ability, like painting or playing an instrument, learning a language is something that some people can do better than others.

And while starting to learn a language as a baby or toddler has it’s advantages (Our kids basically grew up bilingual), I started learning English in school when I was 11, and I still managed to learn it. Yes, native speakers will still tell me that I have an accent, but I’m good enough that they cannot place it, just that it is not native. With only 2-3 weeks a year in the UK, it is probably the closest I can get. Written English is another matter, anyway. I’ve probably read way more English books than the average native speaker…

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DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The thing about language is that you kinda have to start from a young age. The older you start, the more difficult its gonna get.

I was born in Mainland China, I immigrated to the US before I turned 10. It was difficult at first, but now I speak fluent English (American English) with no noticeable accents according to my classmates in highschool.

I wouldn’t say to “give up”, but like… have realistic expectations.

I’m never gonna learn french or german to nearly as good as a native speaker, not in this lifetime at least. If I hadn’t immigrated that eaely, I’d never have the same proficiency. My brother who’s just a few years older than me is horrible in English. But honestly, he’s an abusive piece of shit that I feel better at the fact that I have better English proficiency than him (sorry to bring up my family drama, I’m going though a lot in life and kinda wanna vent a bit)

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Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Anyone who can learn one language, can learn an other.

But they will have to be willing and available.

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404@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
For near-native fluency, there is an age cap at around 10 years. It’s much harder for adults, as their critical learning period is closed: news.mit.edu/…/cognitive-scientists-define-critic…

However there is evidence that psychadelics can open up critical periods for social learning (www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3) and ongoing research about other critical periods, language learning being one of them.

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- megrania@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It might be scientifically accurate but I think the notion of an age cap is misguided. Just because it’s harder doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and the idea of an “age cap” just makes it seem like you shouldn’t even try (might just be my interpretation).
  
  Also it’s just super helpful to learn something even though you’re not perfect.
  
  I’ve started learning English at 10, put in a lot of work over the years, and it got to near-native in my late 20ies (certified by my language-nerd native-english-speaker wife). At 20 I had trouble booking hostel rooms over the phone.
  
  In my 40ies now and I feel like I learned most of the skills that make “me” today, including playing instruments, programming languages, I learned way past ten and many of them past 20. Started learning Spanish at around 35, nowhere near native but decently conversational. About to start the next course in Catalan soon.
  
  So, this is the one thing where I think people just should ignore the science (which is usually not my stance at all) and get cracking, you can teach an old dog new tricks, and it’s always helpful and fun.
  
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Tracaine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
So what I’m gathering from this thread is that since I’m 42, I probably shouldn’t even try learning a new language? That’s reductive but more or less the energy I’m getting.

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- AAA@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  It’s also bullshit. My parents (both 50+) are both learning English right now. Of course they’ll never be close to native speakers. But they are absolutely able to communicate to get around, well beyond the basics too.
  
  It doesn’t get easier. But it also doesn’t get impossible. Motivation is a big step towards it.
  
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  - starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    My in laws learned English in their seventies!
    
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- Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  i have no clue where the fuck people get this idea, it’s clearly nonsense since people pick up accents just from living in a different country for a year or two
  
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- starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m 57 and learning German. I also have long covid brain and I’m in the menopause. I’m still managing to pick stuff up but I keep forgetting it when I actually have to speak German.
  
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- cacti@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  This thread is just bullshit.
  
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- garbagebagel@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  At my work there is like a 70-year-old security guard who spends his 12-hour (pretty quiet) days learning new languages. I don’t know how his other languages are, but when he speaks Spanish to me, he does so extremely well. The only issue is that sometimes he gets mixed up and speaks Mandarin instead of Spanish to me but we’re not gonna fault him for that one.
  
  To be fair, the man is a retired physiology professor so he’s been learning his whole life and is probably a pretty smart dude, but I’m sure if you apply yourself and enjoy learning, you wouldn’t have an issue at least getting the basics of another language.
  
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BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Some people just can’t, but that’s fine, you’re still just as valuable a person as anyone who can ! ^^

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pleasestopasking@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
This doesn’t answer your question, but I’m curious. You say your writing is good but your reading is bad. In my experience reading and writing are so intrinsically linked, and reading is the easier of the two. If it’s possible can you explain the difference for you? I just find it really interesting!

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- housewife@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  When I write I visualise the words-sentences in my head and just type it down. I know the meaning of what I’m writing so it’s very mechanical and “automatic”. Like writing hieroglyphs and knowing their meaning but not how they’re pronounced. When I read there’s obviously that voice in my head trying to pronounce what I’m reading, but since nothing is phonetic it’s tough. When I write I don’t have that voice bothering me.
  
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  - partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I don’t know if its possible, but when reading instead of focusing on the pronunciation of a word (because its not needed at that time when you’re just reading), I skip right to determining the meaning or the concept the word describes. The only time this gives me difficulty is when the author of what I’m reading is trying to do word play or make something rhyme. Since I don’t “hear” it, I don’t get those meanings. This is rare though. Other then that, this gives me the most comprehension when I’m reading in my non-native language.
    
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DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Everyone's brain is wired differently.

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Lembot_0004@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

but my speaking and reading are still bad.

Wow. For most people, reading is the easiest part, writing is more difficult, speaking is hard and understanding speech is the hardest.

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- housewife@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I find English pronunciation very irregular (not phonetic). So reading is hard. Speaking too, because when I construct a sentence in English I “write” it in my head (visually-mentally), then “read” it (vocalise what I visualise); but since my reading is bad in the first place…
  
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  - Lembot_0004@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    I find English pronunciation very irregular (not phonetic). So reading is hard.
    
    Most people, when learning to read, don’t care about pronunciation at all. Like why would they? Here is the word. Who cares how it is pronounced if you see it clearly and know its meaning?
    
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  - Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Tbf, you’re not wrong about the inconsistency of English, it’s because we stole words, phrases, entire dialects from so many sources. And sometimes we kept the original pronunciation, other times we rudely imposed our phonetic expectations of the time and place when we stole them. Also the “correct” pronunciation for many words is different in different English-speaking countries.
    
    On the plus side for you, that means most people are pretty lenient about what we consider “fluent,” and make allowances for accent. Unless they’re a racist asshole in the first place. When you mispronounce a word because you’re following phonetic rules but that word breaks them, most of us can recognize that version because we did the same thing when learning to read.
    
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ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I don’t have any empirical evidence for you on this topic, but in my opinion yes, I think some people are - especially with oral language adaptation. And I think I’m one of them too.

I’ve tried learning French on and off for most of my life. Did it in school for several years, got a French tutor who helped me scrape by with a C in it, spent a few years with it on Duo Lingo (I know I know, that so is far from perfect), spent time watching French news. And after all that I’d say my French language skills aren’t even closer to a conversational level. I especially struggle with the oral side of the language, even though multiple teachers have told me I have a good jack for pronunciation.

I haven’t lived there, so maybe that would push my over the edge? But I don’t know. I think I’m in the same boat as you.

The language your are learning also factors in. I’ve also tried learning Spanish and have found that easier. Meanwhile, I tried learning Mandarin and was completely lost. And English is often described as being ready to learn at as basic level but difficult to master. It’s such a relatively unstructured language with so many weird exceptions.

But with all that said, don’t give up! It might just take longer for the oral part to lock in. And your written English is excellent.

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RBWells@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English is harder than, say English to Spanish or Arabic because the sounds are so very different - I am sure I simply can’t hear some of the different sounds in tonal languages, and had a friend who moved here from Taiwan when she was so young she learned better in English than Taiwanese but still she could not hear the difference between ear and year.

I don’t think it’s impossible but do think it’s unusual. My dad was bilingual English and Spanish and I wish my parents had done the “one speaks English one speaks Spanish” language immersion but we only spoke English at home.

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HatchetHaro@pawb.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m glad to have been raised somewhere trilingual.

In any case, if your reading and speaking is bad, you should practice that part. Get a few books you think you’d enjoy! If you are unsure about a word’s pronunciation while you are reading, you can look it up online, or just ask your husband.

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leraje@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I learnt to speak French by living there for a year or so but I still cannot read it at all beyond short sentences because how a word sounds is different than how it looks.

As for English, I think both learning English and English speakers learning other languages is extra hard because English is such a hodge podge of random bits of other syntaxes and structures. Its a mess of a language in lots of respects making it hard to learn and hard for native speakers to get past the messiness and learn a better structured language.

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I believe language learning like most anything varies quite a bit individual to individual. Much of it might come down to interest. I am horrible with language. When graduating college a friend and I exchanged transcripts and his comment was. Wow. Actually you get pretty good grades (im looking at him like did you expect me to do poorly?), oh, except in spanish. When english was a subject in school it was my worst subject. Now my brother on the other hand totally geeks out on spanish and latin culture. He says he does not speak that well but in the right scenario (low light setting) it can take awhile for someone to realize he is white. I think they realize there is something wierd about his accent but figure he is from somewhere they are not or was diluted by being in the us or such.

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