Uhhhhh, both?
Everything is easier to learn as a kid, especially things involving lots of muscle memory. Go try to learn how to skateboard as an adult
Also, as an adult, you have to provide for yourself. Without language, that virtually becomes impossible. Therefore, you have to keep using a language you already know, which reduces immersion. As a 2-5 year-old, everything is provided for you, so you don’t have to use a language you already know. You can just be there messing up language all you want in trial-and-error until you get it.
To make a real quasi-experimental study (random assignment is impossible because age cannot be assigned), we’d have to ensure that adults are given the same amount of support with activities of daily living as children. We’d also have to give them the same understanding, compassion, and forgiveness for mistakes, and also encouragement and esteem support.
After thinking it through to write this comment, I think the original microblog post is based af.
People really underrate the difficulty of learning not a language but language itself. Concepts learned in one language can transfer over to other languages, but when you learn your first language, you have to learn the concepts for the first time in addition to the word. Personally, I am of the opinion that the critical period in learning is mostly a biproduce of learning over time and less a special feature of a brain’s age. The cortex naturally will organize around the incoming sensory information coming in, so over time the “increased plasticity” of newborn brains will reduce as it becomes increasingly more fitted to their experiences.
Is it difficult if it’s also inevitable? In a social setting, a child will either learn a language or develop one — two wild children would develop a rudimentary language that would evolve in complexity as it’s passed down generation by generation. I wonder if a feral child, who matured alone and without social interaction, could learn a language later in life. Or, if it could, how difficult it would be.
What do you mean by the critical period in learning being a byproduct of learning over time as opposed to a special feature of the brain’s age? I don’t think I grasp it. Are you saying that it’s not really the brain’s age, but rather that it hasn’t learned a lot yet? Which are distinct but highly correlated.
A large foundation for the belief in critical periods for language are based on Genie, a feral child who was entirely unable to learn a spoken language despite significant efforts. Today, she can use some sign language but cannot speak.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)
So the answer is largely believed to be: No. You cannot learn a spoken language if you missed the critical period.
It’s also literally impossible to test/study ethically, so nobody actually knows.
Just from the overview of that wikipedia page, it’s clear she has been subjected to a horrific amount of abuse and emotional turmoil, both as a child and later as an adult. It seems extremely dubious whether you can really draw any general conclusions from such an extreme case study.
I don’t have a source handy, but from what I remember: yes, a feral child can learn language later, but never to the same level of fluency. It’s more like learning a second language. Also there is extremely limited data because it mostly comes from horrifically abusive situations.
If I remember right, the most interesting data came from a study that gathered deaf children from areas where they had no sign language. The young children rapidly developed sign language, but the older children (teens) had a hard time keeping up and did not reach the same fluency.
Just recently watched a video on learning japanese by immersion
They say you have to do some ground work by learning the alphabets, basic grammar and some common words using SRS flash cards. Afterwards immersion is supposed to mostly fill in the gaps (you should tolerate ambiguity and let your brain figure out new words from the context). The video mentions it takes multiple hours a day for years to get good, but it also works with passive listening while doing something else. However they also talk about adding new words you hear to your SRS, mimicking what you hear, interacting with native speakers, etc so there’s definitely a lot more to it than just sitting down and listening to podcasts.
I have a 1,360 day streak of learning Japanese on DuoLingo, 5 minutes every day. I’m at the point that I can read Kindergarten books, albeit slowly. I figure another 3 years and I should be able to read manga.
A colleague of mine swears by immersion, like you mentioned. She lived in Japan for 5 years and knew none beforehand, and was more or less fluent by the time she left.
Honestly, DuoLingo is one of the slowest and shittiest ways to learn a language. I think it’s a great supplement to a language learning routine, and a nice method to keep your habits going, but it’s borderline useless by itself.
That said, it 100% depends on your personal goals. If you’re planning to go to Japan sometime in the future and would like to be able to accomplish some basic interactions (ordering food at a restaurant, asking where locations are, etc.) but have no interest in becoming fluent, it could definitely serve useful.
Honestly it’s just become part of my morning routine and helps jump start my brain for the day. Learning new things is fun even if it’s not the most strategic approach to becoming fluent in a language.