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Originally Posted by Jerrek
Many people find it hard to learn a new language, but it is more psychological than anything else.
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When you are born, your brain is wired with all the language sounds a human can make, but as you hear only certain ones around you while growing up (in a mono-lingual environment) the other pathways in your brain waste away, so you end up being locked in, only being able to easily produce the sounds relivant to your language.
This is why Chinese have dificulty pronouncing R's, and why children have the easiest time learning new languages, and why british kids tend to come out of school crap at foreign languages as we aren't taught them early enough.
It is possible to learn new languages, and as you say, a lot of what's against learning is psychological, people thinking they can't do it, or not really wanting to comit themselves. Pronounciation is the hard part, as the nerve pathways required to make the sound you want, may not actually exist, so you'll never get that word perfect.