Learn Australian English in this episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I give you my reasons why adults can learn languages faster than children! Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS Download the PDF + MP3 AE 387: Why Adults Can Learn Languages Faster Than Children What’s going on, guys? I was just woke up. (I’m) sitting on the deck in front of my room here. (I’ll) show you the view. Hopefully, you can see it. That’s Ocean Grove behind me where I’m living at the moment that. But, I thought I would get up and make a little video this morning. I’ve been wanting to talk about this subject for quite a while, because it’s come up for a long time, whether it was me learning a language, or teaching other people English, and it’s “Can I learn a language as well as a child?”. Okay? “Can I learn as well as a baby?”. ‘Cause I see a lot of people always say, it’s easy for children to learn languages. I’m, you know, 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old. How am I ever going to learn a foreign language? I’m… My brain doesn’t work that way anymore. And I feel like a lot of this is just self-sabotage. And I don’t think it’s really true. I don’t think it’s reflected in reality. And I guess I’m just going to ad lib. (I’m) just going to make it up as I go along off the top of my head. But, I guess firstly, you forget that when a child is born they take, you know, five, six, maybe seven years, before you can have any kind of coherent conversation with them. So, five, six, seven years for you to just be able to talk about what your favourite animal is, what did you do today? Those kinds of mundane and simple conversations. And that’s not to say anything against you know children learning languages. It’s their first language. Of course, that’s how it’s going to be. It’s going to take years and years and years. And you also forget that it takes them, what, 15 hours a day, 15 hours a day, of listening, of you know years of “googoo gaga”. Just making sounds, making it up. A year of just saying individual words. You know, this, that, food, cold, need drink. And then, you know, after that… so it’s taken years just for them to learn these words and the sounds in their mouth, how long does it take for them to string a coherent sentence together, you know, with complicated grammar that describes feelings or talks about the future or talks about the past? It takes a long time for them to learn this, and we forget this. Whereas, you could start a new language tomorrow and probably be ahead of where a lot of these children are, with respect to the complexity of their conversation skills, within a year, right, six months maybe to a year, depending on the language and depending on how hard you work. And that’s probably putting in way less time than these kids. These kids, all they do,