> That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.
After trying for years to learn my wife’s native language, I haven’t really gotten past the “my name is _” and a few other key phrases. I’ve got maybe 10 phrases memorized and I think that’s all my brain can hold at this point. Language learning is not for everyone.
That's certainly true, but there's probably another effect at play here: language learning is extremely time intensive, and you don't progress if you're not practicing a minimum amount of hours per month - you even lose progress again.
You probably could break through to hundreds of phrases with spaced repetition software and "only" a concentrated effort of a few dozen hours. But, yes, this requires almost daily practice. And then later, many hours of maintenance effort.
Every human learns a language from birth; there's no inherent reason why learning a second one "can't be for everyone".
The thing is that it requires a lot of time and studying. At least 30 mins per day is the bare minimum, but 1-3 is much better for results.
I don't personally feel like language learning is easier for me than other people. I just focused on putting the time and studying in diligently over many years.
After trying for years to learn my wife’s native language, I haven’t really gotten past the “my name is _” and a few other key phrases. I’ve got maybe 10 phrases memorized and I think that’s all my brain can hold at this point. Language learning is not for everyone.