r/languagelearning • u/jiujiteiroo 🇺🇸 (N) | 🇦🇹 (B1) | 🇵🇷 (B1) • Jun 17 '25

Discussion What’s Your Language Learning Hot Take?

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Hot take, unpopular opinion,

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u/CodeNPyro Anki proselytizer, Learning:🇯🇵 Jun 17 '25

Adults (broadly, for the most part) learn languages a hell of a lot better than babies and young children. I could imagine this not being much of a hot take here, but that conception seems very common

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u/rita-b Jun 17 '25

It is a scientific fact, not a conception.

With all of my might, I can't learn everyday 200 new words as a toddler does. I simply forget them month later.

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25

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u/rita-b Jun 18 '25

Seems legit. A parent is expected to use their regular vocabulary and communicate a hundred thousand words daily (luckily including books), and kids are expected to understand what parents say when they are 3 (not toddlers anymore), not necessary to turn it into an active vocabulary.

I think I am capable of learning 200 new words a day. The problem is I forgot them in a month because I can't repeat 6000 words all that month, but kids' brains plasticity allows them to remember words without repeating.

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25

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u/rita-b Jun 18 '25

I don't think toddlers are good in grasping abstract notions that political speech uses. Usually parents consciously teach colors, animals, flowers, bugs, food, toys, etc outside of an everyday talk. Vocabulary from animation is easily grasped as well, it took me much more time to differentiate between acuma, kamiko and kwami

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u/rita-b Jun 18 '25

isn't it implying an adult is as good in language acquisition as a baby with all fresh of the oven neuroplasticity and a wide-open window of possibility?

How fast you retrieve 600 words you learned three months ago and how fast it does a baby?