Is there literally anyone here who learned to speak a non-native language apart from English at a C1 level (or higher)...

Is there literally anyone here who learned to speak a non-native language apart from English at a C1 level (or higher), starting as an adult?

Can it even be done?

Sure!
I know a Serb who learned Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.

The "children learn another language faster" is a myth.

Mohammed Knut Bernström learned Arabic fluently, well enough to translate the Quran even.
It's vastly overrated. I learned english at ~6, still have a noticeable accent.

To expand, it's just a matter of time. You might learn 2x as fast as a child or whatever, but put a certain amount of hours into learning a language and you will be fluent in it. LSD allegedly helps, especially for pronunciation and learning the grammar intuitively. (as opposed to constantly applying rules)

it's not, children learn anything faster

but OP, my gf has learned French on B2 and she started as an adult (she's was 23-24 back when she started, learned for two years, had over a year long stop and resumed learning it at the age of 26) so there's hope

No. Secondary language is something else. You get what you put into it, but at the same time you don't want to burn yourself out.

I'm almost there with Spanish and I started at 25. Age doesn't matter, you just need free time.

yeah, 50% of my Russian language class is 25+ years old arabs going to do their masters / doctorates in russian. Sure it takes them a bit more than the younger ones, but they're doing just fine

i'm learning german, b1 currently, started at 24 for first time

You have to use your language, else you will loose it and it's more difficult. I know alot of people who learned and are able to speak German apart from their mother tongue and english.

I speak German at a B2 level and started when I was 16 so pretty close I guess.

Why does your grammar have to be so hard? :/

Noone knows that.
Its really hard for us as well, for foreign ppl it will impossible prob :Ч

because of mongol influence

real slav languages are easy for european to learn

really?
im learning your language too at university. I have y b1 test soon.
do these arabs continue to take russian classes? or after the preprepatory class do they jsut continue learning through listning to seminars, lectures and living etc.
how long have they been learning? are any of them near local level?

If you want to make sense to Russians in Russian you honestly can ignore most of the grammar. Just being able to concatenate nouns and verbs is good enough.

t. Russian

>do these arabs continue to take russian classes?
pretty much every foreign student in russia has to keep taking language classes during all the full lenght of their studies
>how long have they been learning? are any of them near local level?
The ones in my group have been learning for like 7 months already. The preparation course lasts 8 months, after that they start first course.
As far as i have seen it takes 1.5 to 2 years to get legitimately fluent.

I have JLPT N1 so I can speak or read Japanese on C1 level

English: C1 and I might be at B1 in Portuguese and French. I think it can be done with a hell lot of free time to practice or through a 1+ year immersion program

Got German C1 at 18 years old, started at 14. I was pretty young I know, but I'm not really convinced about the whole "you cannot learn x once you're an adult" to be honest.

Wait I thought it was easy.

For example

Я Eлeнa - Me Elena

Tы pyccкий? - You Russian?

Дa, я pyccкaя - Yes, me Russian

Пpивeт! Кaк дeлa? - How business? (as in how are you)

Seems simpler than a lot of languages...

Whats the point of fluency if you don't live there though? I can read a French or Spanish newspaper, any additional effort doesn't seem interesting or productive unless I'm an immigrant trying to assimilate.

The joy of learning a skill.

But is it really joyful? Learning the fundementals of a language is always interesting, but at an advance level its just a lot of trying to remember illogical arbitrary ways of articulating things.

"Learn Arabic -> translate the Quran" Wow that's such a feat.

Can you ask again in two years? I'm learning Japanese as my first full-on conscious learning language. English was kinda absorbed naturally throughout the years.

I would say I got to intermediate level pretty quick (couple months) in French, but it's such a similar language to both Portuguese and English it doesn't even count.

true. but I would like to travel and truly live like a "local" instead of being a tourist. Almost like irl larping.

You need to be more than fluent to translate something professionally.

You are absolutely right, more so when dealing with sacred religious texts, hence my amazement.

Arabic itself although it has rules that are quite ingenious and make understanding it easy, has a high entry level, especially for languages of different linguistic families, for example Roman or Germanic language speakers will have a harder time learning it than other Semitic languages.

Sometimes stuff is not so arbitrary, and you find structurally coherent components that have just evolved naturally, that if you have had any linguistic or pseudo linguistic training (compiler courses in cs curricula for example) you'd wonder how did they come up with THAT. It is gratifying learning a language down to its nitty gritty details, by doing so and arriving at some level of fluency you get the extremely rewarding experience of having a new world open up to you to which you were completely oblivious before, I learned English at around 19~20 years of age, it did seem to me a bit retarded and backwards at first I confess, but once I got past the foreign feel it gave off it became a joy to read, for the record English is the only language I did learn on my own, I had to go to school and be spoon fed to learn French, so I don't have as great a memory of learning the latter as I did learning the first.

they spend more time in school in language classes or hours watching cartoons in moon languages

Doing LSD helps you learn languages? Hm strange but it makes sense. Thanks for the advice, mysterious Swede.

what you just said is the myth

Omitting the copula doesn't make the language substantially simpler. On the contrary, it even makes it a bit more complex because there are certain contexts when you have to insert "ecть" or "этo" in the place of "is", and you need to remember when you have to do it.

>me Elena
>me
r u srs, nig?

Lol, Russian grammar is like child level Slovak grammar.

A similiar table for Slovak would be:

Ja Ty On Ono Ona My Vy Oni
Mňa Teba Jeho Ju Nás Vás Ich
Mne Tebe Jemu Jej Nám Vám Im
Mňa Teba Jeho Ju Nás Vás Ich

so mnou, s tebou, s ním, s ňou, s nami, s vami, s nimi

o mne, o tebe, o ňom, o nej, o nás, o vás, o nich

Practically the same as Russian apart from the obvious sound change different (btw the ch better is not English ch but is pronounced like cyrilic x and h is like in Ukrainian).

It is not Russian that is hard, it is every Slavic language.

I'm B1 in German. I'm gonna do it lads wish me luck

And of course, we do not omit the copula. That is about the only major grammar difference, also, to say "I have" we have the "mám" verb.

Slovak: Mám doma počítač.
Russian: y мeня ecть кoмпютepь.

>It is not Russian that is hard, it is every Slavic language.
Yes, but no one compared Russian to other Slavic languages here, the point was about Russian vs English.

(except for that croatian guy, but he probably just wanted to insult someone)

We always want to insult someone. It's in our nature. Mi smo banditi