You are Not Too Old to Learn a Foreign Language

Who decided that English would be the new IT language? I do not know. However, I feel pretty lucky that I speak it well.

That being said, I realized that talking to people was something I rather enjoyed at a young age and have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity, courage, and self-discipline to pick up a couple of other languages along the way.

I started speaking French fluently at age 17.
I learned Portuguese at 23.
I learned Italian at 30.
I am learning Slovene now at 40.

Don't listen to yourself or to others who say that you are too old to learn a foreign language. It is not true. You may not become perfect, but people will think you are adorable for trying. And that is a good way to make friends. And friends are everything in business.

If you would like to improve, say, your English (you can use this for any language, by the way), here is my basic recipe for fluency. 

If you are reading this and understanding it, your English is probably pretty good already, but this may help you jump to a new level of fluency. For others, just adapt it to the language you are interested in learning or perfecting.

Karoline's Recipe for Fluency

1. Put your Cell phone in English (or the language you want to learn).
2. Read out loud in English (even badly) every day for 10 minutes.
3. Listen to NPR.org every day for 5 minutes. BBC is fine too.
4. Try to write in English (make mistakes, no problem) for 5 minutes a day.
5. Watch at least one movie a week in English with English subtitles. Don't cry if you don't understand much at first.
5. Look for local events in English.

Stop putting it off.