Too late for French?

I'm starting college and I want to learn French.
However, I think I'm too old to begin a completely new language. I'm afraid I won't ever master the pronunciation, plus now it's harder for me to learn new vocabulary. Maybe I should continue Spanish? :( (Sorry, to Spanish speakers, but I was kind of forced into it, hence my not liking it).

In my opinion, college is the perfect time to begin learning a language. The resources available at colleges and universities are far superior in most cases to those offered at the high school level. In addition, the quality of teaching is better at the university level, at least that's certainly the case here in the United States. Finally, you are much more likely to succeed at learning something (not just languages) if you're doing so on your own and you're truly interested in the subject matter. If you want to learn French (or any other language), now would be a perfect time to start! And you'll be able to start with a clean slate.

It's a complete myth that you can't learn a language once you become an adult. It's true pronunciation is harder to attain, but that is the only difficulty. Unless of course you are a retard, but then you probably can't even learn your own language.

It is NEVER too late to learn a language, no matter what the language is. You could be 80 years old and you still wouldn't be too old.

By the way, I used to not like Spanish either, and I too was "kinda forced into it", but now I love it... but it sounds to me that you need a break from Spanish in any case.

- Kef

Yeah also motivation is a big factor in learning a language, the biggest motive for me when learning Portuguese is hoping one day to travel to Brazil and Portugal and my love for music like Samba or Fado.

Steve Kaufmann, who used to be a regular on the antimoon forum, with many intelligent comments (as "Steve K"), learned most of his 9 languages as an adult, including several in his 50s.

He has his own English-learning website, where he talks about his method and background (http://thelinguist.com/). His online system is not free, but you can get some info on how he learned from the site, and especially from his blogs (http://thelinguist.blogs.com/how_to_learn_english_and/language_learning/index.html) if you're willing to scroll through the history. (Or do a search for "Steve K" on the antimoon site.) He probably has the most sensible/successful views on language learning that I've seen.

He learned Cantonese (not exactly the easiest language in the world for an English speaker), by himself, in Vancouver--at age 55. If you have the motivation, and the right method, age should not matter.

Are you aware that there people in this world that have a severe medical condition which causes them to be that way? My 80 year old mother for instance is one of those people. She is a truck driver that has bad knees and a bad back from driving the truck but you probably do not care about that case either. Oh well I am not one of those people I am 5'11 250lbs, from Manila, Philippines and I exercise every day. I would love to see you say something like to my mother in front of this Hispanic Asian. Probably never happen though you are probably just an internet tough guy. I doubt very seriously you would say that to someones face. Just my thought.What do you think? Oh I am sorry you probably do not have a brain. I on the other hand will be happy to buy you a plane ticket to come here and see if you have the nerve to say that to someone I know.

Foondador,

What's your problem? A 10 year old can have a medical condition that makes learning difficult. We're talking about age itself--and Student is only a college student! Not sure about YOUR brain, but check your emotions--you sound like someone who's always ready to pick a fight. All my best to your mom, but please try to stick to the subject rationally.

Everyone else,

You should check the Internet for Kato Lomb. Not only did she learn all her languages by herself, mostly in Hungry, she continues learning into old age--she learned Hebrew, her 17th language, in her eighties. A great sight on her methods:

http://www.english-learning.co.uk/lomb.alkire.html

I'm also in college and I've learned three more languages since I got to college decently enough to have conversations. Make friends with exchange students! They're here to learn English in EXCHANGE for something else. Trade off helping them with English and culture for them doing the same for you. It works wonders. Again, just ignore Foondador.

I've been learning French for the past 7 years but it wasn't untill college that I really began to succeed at it. Take the class, if it's too hard and too much, you can always just drop the class without sacraficing your gpa and audit and learn for the sake of learning. But also, don't just put Spanish under the rug; it's extremely useful and eventually will be a very important language as South American countries will emerge as business powers by the time you have children.

My suggestions are to take the classes, watch children's cartoons in French through the internet (you will probably understand very little at first but it WILL help you, I promise!), get a really good dictonary and eventually more your way up to watching French films with FRENCH subtitles (If you watch it with English it wont really help all that much because the translations are pretty loose for contextual reasons and you want to eventually be able to process French without having to think of the direct translations). It might feel like a big undertaking but think of all the benefits French will give you! You'll be able to travel western Europe without a problem between knowing Spanish and French!