Best Time to Learn a New Language

Language learning is often said to be easy for children and get more difficult over time. It’s actually true that from birth to 5 years old, children’s brains are ready to learn language. Though it may get increasingly challenging to learn a new language as we get older, to learn one well at any age is possible and worth your time. From birth through puberty, children learn language rapidly because of their natural ability. After puberty, however, language learning becomes more difficult, and their ability to learn new languages is getting weaker and weaker. The later, the harder. But being difficult is not a bad thing. Experts say learning is not about making things easy. It’s about making things worthwhile. A new research shows language learning can be worthwhile in later life and that we can indeed learn all our life. Here is a true story. An old lady began studying Russian at the age of 56 with very little foreign language knowledge. At 75, she went on to write her graduation thesis about Russian poets. Now at the age of 92, she is one of the most famous translators of Russian poetry into English. The central message of the old lady’s story is that it’s never too late to learn. Instead of wasting time while aging, we can enrich ourselves all the time. Being old doesn’t mean that we can’t learn new things. We can make ourselves enriched and better.