He Accidentally Learned PERFECT English 

That’s a great idea, my recommendations are all over the place

Why do you need russian?

@@runforjoypsn talking to my in-laws

Thanks Jeff, you are a gentleman and scholar as always🙏. It certainly has produced a high level of English in Brian. I wonder at what stage exactly he started speaking but it shows you can enjoy the process and pick up a language without making it a slog! Good luck with the Spanish

That's more honest and sensible than what the polyglots keep thinking that input, no study and immersion alone will make you some language learning genius. Also, like you said a young child's brain is different from an adult and even a teen so different methods have to be employed to ensure that you have success. Also, why do people act like young children and teens don't learn at school as well with their L1 and L2. Not to mention, they get secondary input from educated older kids and adults in throughout their lives as well. Regarding study, I would say playing with the traditional method at something like anywhere between 20-40% could be good too. Sometimes, some days of immersion mixed with higher percentages of traditional learning. Mixing the levels and percentages not just accepting blind faith narratives in polyglottery. You play around with things to shake things up, but you don't completely abandon traditional methods because they're hard and unsavory. Just because they don't always produce immediate success and can be boring. Not just following the me fluency pathway of so many polyglots. Different intervals of this and that over time. Like, studying grammar and finding and coming up with more layman's terms that allow you the levity to keep getting real results and wrap your head around rules related to your target language. You learn and unlearn things, so you have to ensure that you are not just regurgitating stock phrases and filler that can be wooden/archaic and too academic statements from textbooks and older material from different sources. The real truth is there are loads of people that lived in foreign countries and failed to learn different languages. So, this idea that input and immersion is the only way you can truly learn and be successful is denying reality. You can't just be around it you have to study and use it. Through listening, speaking, reading and writing. The polyglot community is selling a dream and narrative that this is the only way like a religion. No these are just additional ways to learn alongside with more traditional approaches it's just another avenue to go down to aide in your learning.

I don't know if it's that much about the plasticity, and more kids just having ungodly amounts of time and pure enthusiasm to throw at the task.

@@Komatik_ That too, kids have more time to fail and succeed which means a lot versus an adult who has a job and other responsibilities that consume their time.

Politely disagree. The issue isn't about plasticity. It's about adults trying to constantly analyze the language/game the language through knowledge of rules or patterns to more efficiently/faster speak it, but this disrupts everything and interferes with the process. Most adults don't want to spend the time listening, they don't have the patience, so they learn ABOUT the language, instead of the language itself. I would only recommend learning the grammar after you have a good degree of spoken fluency and when do you learn the grammar, learn the grammar that native speakers of that language learn. For example I never learned the 12 verb tenses in English when I was in school, I only learned it after becoming a TEFL teacher. Note that did I see a verb conjugation chart until I took a Spanish class. I did however learn about active and passive voice in English classes for writing... So, I disagree that the brain has anything to do with it, I think the attitude does. If an adult can just be patient and listen without trying to game the process, they can and have learned just like children. See this website for more information algworld.com/, not the person who runs this school in Thailand learned this way. And also read about J Marvin Brown Ph.D linguistics Cornell. Please note my opinion is based on reading about this subject from linguistic experts (Krashen, Brown, and Winitz) for years and it is not my guess or hasty deduction. I welcome any sourced new information though that would challenge this view.

Scandinavians start English from pretty much birth, yet they get to adults sounding very clearly SweDISH, Daeh-nish and Norweejjean.

@@daysandwords Some of them sound close to nearly American or native English speakers. Also they speak to each other in their Scandinavian languages as well as in school. Furthermore this guy made it a point to try to sound as American as possible and consumed a shit ton of content. Seriously, It's not that impressive due to the fact that English has become the lingua-franca of the world. You'll be seeing a lot more of this in the years to come as people will abandon their native languages entirely in exchange for English. In fact it will become the norm.