A new paper was published in the journal Cognition titled “A Critical Period for Second Language Acquisition” that used a new, viral Facebook-quiz-powered method of gathering a huge linguistic dataset to provide new insights into how human beings learn language and what effect age has on that process.
In a nutshell, this team found that if you start learning a language before the age of 18, you have a much better likelihood of obtaining a native-like mastery of the language’s grammar than if you start later. This is a much older age than has been generally assumed and is really interesting for reasons I’ll get into a bit later.
This data has also given us a really amazing insight into language learning in general and shows that adults of any age can obtain incredible mastery nearly as quickly as children.
READ MORE:
medium.com/@chacon/mit-scientists-prove-...-as-well-as-children
