If you are already in your teens you can't learn a new language?

I know firsthand that French isn't as complicated as Japanese from an English background, but age does not really effect the learning curve.

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Actually age has a great deal to do with it. Children immersed in a second language environment at an early age, until puberty sounds about right, with enough exposure can learn spontaneously, and I mean without textbooks, flash cards or workbooks, to a point indistinguishable from a native speaker.

For most of us past that critical period, the brain isn't fluid enough to make it an an innate, completely natural process unfortunately. That isn't to say a high degree of fluency cannot still take place. The only difference is it isn't going to be picked up entirely through osmosis in a few years to the point of sounding accentless and fully natural.

There is a huge difference from being immersed in the culture and language and learning it from an outside prospective (like the OP). I can accept the fact that children at a young age have a much higher potential for learning, but teaching in a non-immersive environment at any age within reason is similar. It all comes down to effort and guidance and perhaps a little luck.

Charles Barkley said:

Sorry if this caused any confusion. Your response to my original post questioned my asertion that its very hard not to have an accent, so in my last post I was trying to flesh out my definition of 'not having an accent.' As I stated in my last post, to me, not having an accent amounts to being 'indistinguishable from a native speaker.' If your definition is something different, which it appears it is, then we arent really arguing about anything, just have different definitions. Everything in my post was to say its very very hard to become indistinguishable from a native speaker. Sorry if I caused you to read it in any other way.

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Everyone has an accent; there is no way not to have one.

Even in Japanese there are numerous distict accents. I remember when I lived in Yamaguchi prefecture, a lady I had met for the first time asked me if I was from Osaka.

Why?

I had a Kansai accent at the time. One which I regret to say that I have lost...

Soloistic said:

There is a huge difference from being immersed in the culture and language and learning it from an outside prospective (like the OP). I can accept the fact that children at a young age have a much higher potential for learning, but teaching in a non-immersive environment at any age within reason is similar. It all comes down to effort and guidance and perhaps a little luck.

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Children will learn much more easily listening to a native speaker through a process of imitation and mimicry than will most adults. That's what they are receptive to and what their brains are wired to absorb. Anything from television to a classroom teacher to living in the country will generally have some impact. Although obviously the greater amount of exposure, the greater potential for lasting gains.

Contrarily, in a classroom setting being taught an in their mother tongue by a teacher unskilled in the target language is probably a worse situation than for older people. Impoverished lessons could mean picking up bad habits which likely won't be supplemented or corrected with outside materials (texts, tapes, videos...).

This equation reverses itself with age unfortunately, but guidance and luck more than effort I think are the crucial factors for child learning. ☝