[steven]

I think that there are a few reasons for why learning a language gets harder as you age. While I'm sure there are reasons beyond those which I will explain, I'll just share the ones that I've noticed and maybe some tips on how to deal with them.

The first thing that I've noticed is that time gets shorter with age. It's kind of a gloomy way to look at things, but one year when you are 10 years old is 1/10th of your life. 1 year when you are 20 is 1/20th of your life. In otherwords, 1 year seems longer when you are younger. Even though I'm still relatively young, this is something I've felt. A year now feels like a month when I was really little. While there isn't really anything you can do to solve this, you can cope with it by having better time management. Creating schedules and checklists helps a lot. Don't spend too much time planning or you'll find you've run out of time, though. Also, don't load yourself with too much stuff or you'll burn out. This seems obvious to some people (although it wasn't always to me)... but it's easier said than done. I guess it'd be like trying to run a marathon for the first time even though you've taken shit care of your body for the last few years-- it'd just be physically impossible. You have to like build up to it. I think a good schedule is the same way-- you have to like mentally gear yourself for it.

The second thing I've noticed is that as people age their beliefs and language become almost like set in stone. Linguistically speaking, this is called "foissilization". It's funny because I've only heard it said about an L2(3, 4 etc) but never about things in general. What I'm talking about is the fact that you may have spent 20-30 years with your language and culture... so everything becomes "obvious" or "just the way it is". While this is important for most kinds of learning (like things that require deductive reasoning) I think it is detrimental to second language aquisition. One way I like to think of it is like someone who is color blind. Say someone can only see the shades of blue... and only shades of blue. Learning Japanese language and culture (from my English speaking perspective) is like adding a new color. Every now and then I catch glimpses of this "new color" and start to add it to my pallete. So at the beginning I might not have even noticed a new color there. Slowly I start seeing blue with a little bit of yellow in it. I practice the language with natives and speak fluently with interlanguage (which in my opinion would be green in this exapmple). Then I can start to separate the interlanguage from my first langauge and keep adding more "yellow" (in this case) to it until it becomes a definable primary color. It's not "perfect" but it's very close. I like to think of my English as not being a "primary" color, but an approximation of it. That's the best anyone can do with a language especially considering how languages evolve so frequently. I don't know how much this helps, but it's kind of like the English prhase "thinking outside the box" and opposite the phrase "tunnel vision".

Another thing is work or school obligations. Work takes a lot of time and you're tired when you're done (I guess work is like school if you bust your ass). So basically you might try to find a job in which you are exposed to the language or a job where it is appropriate to do a bit of studying when you have free time or during lunch or whenever. As far as school goes, you could try studying in college. Like Kyle said, it'd be a good idea to find a place like Paris where there'd be a lot of natives to interact with. You might even find they have a club at your school that you could join. That's a perfect way to add more of the "primary color" to your pallette.

So that was just three different things... and I'm sure there are a ton of other things you can come up with (like if you have kids or are married or have moved out or whatever). At any rate, it gets gradually harder to find time for language learning as an adult. On the flip side, as an adult you may find yourself in a situation which requires you to use what you've learned... this creates an immediate need for learning, in which case you will probably bite the bullet and learn as much as you can to get by. I think that what most people mean when they say "it's harder to learn a language as an adult" is that anyone who's like 9 years or older is considered an adult (which means their culture and langauge is pretty firmly ingrained in their brains). My response to that is the "fossilization" thing I was talking about.

Good luck!