New suggests that to achieve -like proficiency in a new language, people should start learning before the of ten. Researchers said children up to the age of 18 remain at learning . Unfortunately, who want to pick up a new language beyond their late are past the "critical " when language-learning ability starts to decline. A researcher said: "As far as a child is concerned, it's quite easy to become bilingual....That's when you're at learning languages. It's not really something that you can make up ."
The research was based on the of 670,000 people taking a 10-minute online grammar . Researchers measured the grammatical ability of people who started learning a language at points in their . The test had grammar that were likely to confuse non-native speakers. These measured a person's proficiency. Another suggested older people might be too to learn a language. He said after 17 or 18, people leave , go to university or start . All of these could affect how well learns a language.
