as an adult, is it ever possible to become fluent in another language?
By yr4med
@yr4med (15)
July 8, 2010 11:53am CST
So, we probably have all met a person who speaks a trillion different languages and seems oh so cultured, usually because they have parents speaking different lanuguages or moved countries as a young kid...BUT, what about if you move as an adult? Do you think, or perhaps even you are one of these adults, that has grasped a language so well you consider yourself fluent in it.
I've been living in Poland for 3years now, and granted, i don't make much of an effort, but i have friends who from day one have tried to embrace the language and they're still not even at the level where they can have a decent conversation with a native. I have a polish boyfriend, who speaks decent english (not fluent) and i wonder if one day either of us will ever speak fluently in the others language.
When I have kids i will definitely enrol them in language classes from a young age, i think it's an amazing gift to have to be truly multilingual :)
2 responses
@Memnon (2170)
•
8 Jul 10
I think that it is possible, but takes a lot of dedication. I imagine that there are two issues here. First, my impression is that Eastern European languages have a different cant than those of the west: and second, we are far to used to other nations speaking English.
Sometimes UK papers run free CDs for language learning. If I see any in Polish I'll try to pick them up.
@JordanElizabeth (16)
• United States
8 Jul 10
I think it's possible to become fluent in many languages as an adult, but it would take hard work, practice, and studying to become fluent. I would love to be multilingual eventually; right now I only speak English (main language) and I've had a few years of Spanish but I don't consider myself fluent in it yet.
When I have kids, I think I'm going to enroll them in language classes when they're young as well. I wish my parents would have done that.
