Why is it so hard for adults to learn to speak english as a 2nd language?

2 Comments

1. ehavstad
   Posted December 28, 2009 at 2:25 pm | Permalink

   Kids still learn speech sounds until around age five, then it starts diminishing. Different languages have different sounds, and children are able to hear and learn these sounds better than adults. It’s because they are learning how to talk, whatever languages they are exposed to they will learn the sounds from. Adults on the other hand can not hear the differences because they don’t speak those sounds. Since you speak english, think about trying to repeat something someone says in Chinese. Even if they say it really slow, you will have a hard time. And if you do learn Chinese, it is still difficult to understand what they are saying if they speak to you because it is hard to hear and differentiate between sounds.
   Edit:
   Adults also think in their 1st language. So if we learn another language we are constantly translating in our head from one language to another. Kids are still learning language, so a second language comes more easily.

   Fun fact
   language development occurs at the same rate across languages and cultures, so the difficulty of the language makes no difference to young children’s ability to learn it.

2. Tom J
   Posted December 30, 2009 at 2:57 am | Permalink

   My question is why do they have such hard time learning it as 1st language.