Am I Too Old to Re-learn German and Possibly a third language?

Question

Growing up as a true child I was taught both German and English within precisely the same time frame and its difficult to say if I have a first language or not? However; due to the fact that the local population of where my friends and family were living were getting extremely irate with us speaking something other than English and to the fact that I was slightly better at speaking German than English, my Parents thought that it would be in my greater interest to stop speaking and reading in German when I was fourteen years old and unfortunately my friends parents made the same decision for their kids.

I have always wanted to be able speak three languages before I die; two Western and one East Asian, but I'm a 25 year old man right now and I'll be hitting 26 in five months and I'm wondering if my head is too old for this stuff. German is far from a ''foreign''language and infact I used to be fluent but I haven't spoken, read, or heard a word of it for as long as most middle school kids have been alive..As for an East Asian Language I will be as fresh as most Westerners with my only knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean being vulgar profanities which will not be very useful.

Am I too far gone age wise for either of these goals to be achieved?

Inselstricken · Answer

Why only three languages? Why are your ambitions so small?  Why not go on learning languages throughout your life? I'm with Candela!

Tony R · Answer

I read not too long ago that an American couple retired and decided for some reason to up and relocate to France.   The wife had taken French but that was in high school, the husband had no French background.  After 5 years of living there she had become fluent and he nearly fluent.  So if someone in their 60's can do it, I suppose you can.

Wise_Seeker · Answer

Anything is possible. Age is not important when it comes to seek knowledge.

Thank you

Candela · Answer

No! I am still learning languages in my fifties.

Frank · Answer

Man you are never too old to learn anything!

Many thought it is hard to learn a language such as Mandarin Chinese. As a Chinese teacher for many years, I would say it is NOT TRUE! In my opinion, Chinese is one of the most interesting languages in the world! Chinese is a picture language, which means ancient Chinese people draw different pictures as Chinese characters out of everything they saw in the environment! According to my experience, the best way to learn well the language is to learn the radical of the characters first, which by itself usually has a hint from the writing (or drawing) and then forms the character.

By the way, I'm teaching Chinese online via Skype, add me to have a FREE TRIAL! My skype name is : chinese.tutor.frank or GO TO http://www.chinesehulu.com/tutoring

Cheers!

Am I Too Old to Re-learn German and Possibly a third language?

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