I’m applying to grad schools and most have a second language fluency requirement prior to graduation (not prior to admissions thank goodness). Most of the programs have ways around this (with one, for example, you can take certain web design courses, which I want to do anyway), but I’d actually like to learn a second language anyway, and since it’s by far the most practical for America I want to go with Spanish.
So, has anybody here learned a second language since you were 30 or so (i.e. after adulthood)? If so, was it through a course or immersion or did those CDs/tapes/DVDs/etc. help?
Side question- does anybody know just how fluent you have to be in order to pass a fluency exam?
Thanks for any info-
j
*I took three quarters worth of German way back ago and was very good and could even carry on conversations in it and impressed my prof, all that, but it was 18 years ago and you don’t get a lot of opportunity to speak German in Alabama so all but some of the vocabulary and a few phrases are gone.
I started learning Vietnamese in my mid to late 30’s. It wasn’t a formal learning environment, I just happened to have a lot of Vietnemese friends and I worked with quite a few as well. When I started picking it up, I was told that I sounded almost like a native speaker because I was able to master the tones very well. Maybe it requires a musical ear, I don’t know.
Since I never sought formal instruction, I don’t have a large vocabulary (a few hundred words maybe) but I can still impress the hell out of the waiters when I order at Vietnamese restaurants
I’d say I’m much more proficient with Vietnamese (learned later in life and informally by simple exposure) than I am with Spanish (which I studied at a young age all four years of high school).
“Fluency”? Back when I was in grad school, you needed to demonstrate “a reading knowlege of” two languages … which could be achieved by cramming for a semester and a January intensive and passing a test in which you translated a few paragraphs.
No ability to speak the language at all – no ability to translate from English to either of these languages.
I’ve never heard of a “fluency” requirement, but rather have to demonstrate a certain ability. Even after all these years, my Thai is terrible, but I bet it would be good enough to meet any school’s requirement for a secondary language.
Both my parents learned english long after their 30s when we moved to the US. My dad a lot better than mom since he had to speak it everyday at work so hes perfectly fluent but heavily accented. Mom learned enough to understand most things and make herself understood but if someone talks to her she gets flustered and misses a lot of things, but she can watch tv and understand everything.
You may also be required to study a language that’s commonly used in the literature in your field. Check with the program you end up going with to find out exactly what they want.
But if you want to actually be somewhat fluent you a) need to put in some book work to learn the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation and b) there’s no incentive like a love muffin to really speak the language.
I can’t guarantee it was after age 30, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 28 to 30 that my cousin spent 2 years in Yemen to learn Arabic. He is fluent now.
I am 30 right now and would very much like to become fluent in French. I am about half way there, but I’ll let you know in about a year.
There’s a world of difference, and with a semester’s worth of half-assed effort you can easily b.s. your way to “reading comprehension.” Don’t worry about it.
When I was in grad school I took a class called “French for reading” that was expressly designed to help doofuses like me pass their grad-school language requirement. It was very easy and I passed but retained nothing. A couple of years later I had the opportunity to live in France and finally achieved a level of French that, if not fluent, was certainly proficient enough that a lot of people couldn’t tell I was American (I was usually mistaken for German, for some reason). I was 27 at the time. I’m now 40 and can still carry on a French conversation with a native-francophone cow-orker.
In Dutch it’s called a husband. Or a wife, in Dutch nouns have gender after all.
There is a joke in the local English club that the Dutch government was concerned that the language would die out, so they sent a phalanx of citizens out to pair off with foreigners and teach them the language.
I heard my first word in Dutch when I was past the age of 30. I learned it from my spouse and now regularly pass. Though I am occasionally mistaken for Belgian for reasons I have not worked out – I think it’s just sort of, “unplaceable accent, must be Belgian then”.
I didn’t learn to read Dutch until I got here and my spelling is still abysmal. But reading proficiency is easy.
When I was in grad school, passing the “French for Reading” class meant you had fulfilled the language requirement. (I took it when I was around 30 and it was a breeze, but I already knew two foreign languages fluently). And yes, you should definitely investigate whether there’s a specific language requirement. For my major, only French and Russian counted, in most cases.
I’m not 30 yet, but I’m closing in (my birthday’s in July OMG!!! I’M GETTING OLD!!) and I’ve become fluent in Bulgarian in the last couple years. FWIW.
I learned Czech around 27-28. My friend who was the same age became fluent enough that Czechs would have to speak with him a while before they realized he wasn’t Czech also. It helped that we lived there while learning, of course.
Hey Sampiro, it’s probably none of my business, but I thought you decided not to go to grad school after all? I just remember the thread where you were debating whether to go or not.
But to the topic at hand: I’m of that age and I’m about to start learning Hindi, so I hope the answer to your question is “don’t be silly! of course you can!”
I learned Spanish when I was about 26 / 27, and I’m often mistaken for a native speaker (from Cuba – white guy, Caribbeanish accent, must be Cuban!), so it’s definitely possible to learn another language to fluency well past adolescence.
