When adults learn a foreign language and speak it fluently, they form a new language speech center in the brain that is separated from the native language center.
We don’t think in our native language; we think in a code language of symbols, images and associations.
The majority of adults (approx. 95%) loses their linguistic talent after the age of 18 and thinks the loss is irreversible.
A small proportion of adults (less than 5%) somehow preserve the child’s ability to learn a new language without reverting to cross-translation.
When adults learn a new word in a foreign language, they subconsciously associate it with a similar word in their native language and not with the image or situation.
The advice “learn like a child” is wishful thinking: adults need to employ particular tools or techniques to switch their brains to learn like a child.
Although my background is in science and I have 11 patents to my name, my real passion has always been foreign languages. I had two jobs in Russia: I worked as a Head of a Research Laboratory developing new materials and I worked as a simultaneous interpreter in the former USSR.
During many years of my work as a scientist and simultaneous interpreter, I was trying to find an answer to the question: why do some people like me learn a foreign language easily, whereas most adults have a hard time with a foreign language, and many simply give up?