How do you move to a foreign country and never learn to speak their language...

[lingyi]

@septimus

How does ease of language learning vary with age? Obviously toddlers learn fastest, and teenagers will learn much faster than adults, but what about 30-year old vs a 50-year old? I learned Thai when I was in my 30’s; I suspect it would have been much more difficult if I’d waited until my 50’s.

Thai is extremely easy, and very fun, to learn. It has a simple lexicon, with many easy to learn compounds (‘patient’ is ‘heart cool’; ‘generous’ is ‘heart good’, etc.), a very simple grammar, and no inflections at all. (I’ll guess that it is much easier for an inflected language (e.g. French) speaker to learn Thai than vice versa.) Yet I’ve met bar owners in Pattaya that seemed perversely proud that they’d spent years in Thailand without learning more than a few phrases!

As I think about (always a dangerous thing :rolleyes:) learning a different language is easier the younger you are because you have less experiential knowledge and less social pressure to conform. Young children will sometimes develop their own language spoken within their peer group. If they call a ‘car’ a ‘poid’ and their peers acknowledge that phrase, they’re able to communicate and share their knowledge.