ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by second languages because we

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have such a mastery of the first lol hashtag not really BRB okay alright [Person texting on smartphone]

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here's question what time in life would it be the most difficult to learn

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Chinese as a Second Language and here are potential answers all right well

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language acquisition starts really really early in fact babies can identify [Babies speaking on telephones]

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their mother's native language from within the womb yep it turns out babies

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are way smarter than we give them credit for and that might help us out in our [Boy in diapers graduating]

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question depending on where you're at in life learning a second language might be

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a bit of an uphill battle researchers have identified a critical period in [Scientists working on experiment]

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language acquisition that is a developmental period when humans are

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best at absorbing languages and unsurprisingly this period is also best

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for learning a second language why well second language is more of a second

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native language meaning you'll have a more intuitive understanding of it if [Man in a suit on the red carpet]

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you keep using it throughout your life your accent will be pretty great too

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you'll probably kill at impression as you get older your brain becomes less [Finger prods brain]

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malleable and we get used to using language in a certain way this is a good

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thing it means more efficient cognitive functioning and this is why toddlers

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take forever to say something and where do the lies don't tell them to spit it [Boy spitting out food]

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out now you take that pretty literally but there's bad news here too learning a

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new language isn't as easy your brain is no longer a super flexible sponge as it

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ages more like a semi absorbent Gumby now

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well bearing this in mind then it's fairly easy to figure out the answer

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from looking at our answers we can easily pick out early childhood as the [Answers appear]

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prime time for language acquisition and can therefore infer this would be the

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best time to pick up a second one too and seeing as our questions asking about

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the most difficult period all we need to do is locate the answer furthest away

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from a not furthest alphabetically you know furthest in life which just so

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happens to also be e grad school of all of our answers learning a second [Woman teaching students]

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language would be hardest in grad school another thing you couldn't learn Chinese

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in grad school but starting earlier definitely would have helped so good [Young boy with Chinese 101 book]

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luck we'll just stick to knowing the menu items at

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Panda Express [Man pointing to menu at Panda Express]

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