PAST THE AGE OF 18, A RECENT STUDY SHOWS IT IS CONSIDERABLY MORE DIFFICULT TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE. Yet still, to do so isn’t completely void of possibility; the only real impediment being the vicissitudes of daily living.
The author of the study, conducted at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), notes: “There’s roughly a period of being a minor that goes up to about age 17 or 18 in many societies. After that, you leave your home, maybe you work full time, or you become a specialized university student. All of those might impact your learning rate for any language,” says Joshua Hartshorne, now assistant professor of psychology at Boston College.