Studies have shown that people are less likely to attain native fluency in a language if they start learning that language after the age of 10.
David Goldenberg from the MinuteEarth YouTube channel explains that the reason for this is not only that children have different brains. There are also a number of psychological barriers that come into play when adults try to learn a new language.
However, don’t fret if you’re an adult trying to expand your language repertoire – you are still able to learn many new languages!
Written by Janna Mack. From Luxembourg, she has degrees in Linguistics, Education, and Translation from Glasgow University.
Visuals by Zicheng Zhang. Master’s student in the trilingual program of Learning and Communication in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts. She comes from China, likes traveling and language learning.