Discussions in other languages

[vaklaff]

(04-06-2024 10:41 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  …

First things first, I don’t agree with the original suggestion and I hope this forum remains English-only.

But if I may continue in the side topic of ease of learning and age, then well Thomas, your personal story is not much relevant, Dutch and English are too close. And the need to hear the sound of the language in one’s early age you mentioned yourself is more important than you realize.

My personal counterexample: I studied two languages simultaneously and Russian was easy, English very hard, even though I wasn’t interested in the first at all and put quite an effort in the latter, yet the results were terrible. Fast forward, I’ve been using English as my work language for the last 10 years, listened to many English audiobooks (hundreds I think), but I still can’t set apart most English vowels and I just guess them from the context. Russian on the other hand was a peace of cake from the get go, no “foreign” sounds.

English was bound to be relatively easy for you regardless of your age, just like Russian was for me. But the age would have played a much bigger role for you in case of Czech or Japanese :-)