A young guy in our class asked if we really think age matters when learning a language. Yes, junior, it fuckin' matters. The old dogs/new tricks thing is real. It's an overstatement, sure, but there is a reason the expression evolved. Babies learn language by merely existing in a speaking world. We have a teacher who gained fluency by playing American video games when he was a kid. Are you kidding me? Carol and I are reasonably smart, highly motivated, and we study hard. We have taken classes for years, read books, studied verbs, made Brazilian friends, listened to hours of language CDs, quizzed each other regularly, and spent the past 7 weeks living in Brazil doing everything we can to get a grasp on this language. We are slowly getting there, but we are far, far, from fluent. Learning a new language gets more difficult with every year that passes and don't let anyone tell you differently.
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