If I'm over 25, is it still too late for me to "learn" French or can I just watch French sitcoms for like a year and be up-to-speed?

No but at this age you should probably ask yourself at what point in life did you stoop so low as to want to communicate with the French.

/s

It's never too late to learn a language but it's a bit of an uphill battle, and you're not going to learn it by just watching shows. You need to practice regularly and understand the grammar and sentence structure. You also have to speak it with other people to get feedback, you can't only learn to listen.

It's about brain plasticity and 25 is kind of the same as 45...

So they can learn French in an "anything is possible if you try" kind of way, but realistically unless they straight up move to France and completely dive into it, it's going to be a massive struggle to get to where they can even understand French shows without English subtitles.

Like, at a certain point people should realistically evaluate the amount of work and payoff they get from stuff.

Marrying a French person and wanting to learn their language? Yeah. That's probably worth the work.

Wanting to watch French TV without reading? Not so much
- Yeah, no.
  
  This is bullshit.
  
  (Especially the stuff about brain plasticity and learning capacity)
  
  https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/review/30/neural-plasticity-dont-fall-for-hype/
- Learning a language has benefits beyond that, it can be it's own reward to have dedicated time to something and have it pay off and it is good for brain health. Bilingual people suffer less from dementias.

Brain plasticity, window of opportunity, it's all babble. You can learn new languages just fine as you age; the matter here is how much time you spend using the language.

The reason why adults perform generally worse than kids learning languages is mostly motivational, and not spending enough time with the language. But as an adult you got access to a bunch of resources that kids wouldn't, such as a decent grasp of grammar on theoretical grounds, that you can (and should) use to your advantage.

Note however that watching sitcoms will likely not be enough to get any decent grasp of any language. (Otherwise I'd be speaking Japanese, given the amount of anime that I watch.) You'll need proficiency on four levels: hearing, speaking, reading, writing.

Hah, babble, more like Babel, amirite?

If I'm over 25, is it still too late

Just stop. I don't mean to be one of those people but you apparently have no idea how young 25 is. People have started over, gone to school, completely changed careers, moved to new countries, and yes: learned different languages in their 70's+. It's not too late for them, and it's not even close to too late for you.

Children seem to have the easiest time learning a new language, but the rest of us can as well! The key is immersion. If you can converse with a native-speaker every day, you'll probably have the most success, but whatever you do, be consistent!

It's never too late to learn a language. However, French is one hell of a step coming from English.

French is my main language and even if I've been speaking it for close to 40 years now, I still learn language exceptions and rules today.

Still, I'd give it a go if I were you, learning something new is always fun. Enjoy!

If you want a rough comparison of the relative difficulty for a native English speaker to learn different languages, the US military’s Defense Language Institute’s guidelines are well-regarded, and they consider Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese to be the easiest.
French is tough, but I'd argue it isn't that hard compared to some other languages. Grammatical gender and conjugation are a pain in the ass, but the vocabulary is very familiar to a native English-speaker because of the languages' common history (thanks, William the Conqueror)
Im Canadian and also already have a significant french education, just never got "conversational", def have since like age 3 exposure if only Ontarioish

No and no. It's not too late, and just watching sitcons won't teach you enough to start speaking. But if you just start actual studying and practicing you can learn it just fine. Watching TV can be used to practice listening, but on it's own it's not enough unless you're a wonderkid.

"I think I said "wunderkind", but okay."

I've learned (I guess still learning) a new language as an adult for the last 2 years. I tried just about every method to learn (classes, courses, books, god knows how many apps/services). To get to the point of being able to accelerate your learning with foreign movies & TV shows, you need to have consumed around 200-400hrs of the language in a comprehensible format first. This is how I would do it if I had to again:

Forget about grammar for now. Grammar is boring and it will make you second-guess when trying to form sentences. Better to just practice and have someone correct you as needed. You'll learn grammar naturally to an extent (i.e. it will just SOUND right), and you can supplement it later on when you have a better grasp of the language.
Use beginner audio lessons that focus on simple phrases and/or short stories (e.g. Pimsleur or US foreign service language tapes). This is to help train your ear to understand how words are pronounced. This should get you about 40-50hrs of practice.
Find some French youtubers that use the comprehensible input (Krashen) method to complement the audio course - some recommendations in this reddit thread
Once you have around 50-100hrs in, now is the time to find some easy content to consume. My recommendations would be: 1) movies/tv shows you already watched in english but dubbed in french (so you already know the context. You might need to leave off french subtitles if they don't match audio), 2) podcasts or audiobooks where only one person speaks at a time, 3) french kids shows
After 100hrs, I would continue to consume content as detailed above but you might be able to throw in some easy french-made movies/shows at this point - your goal is to understand about 80%. If you find you can't understand enough, put it on the backburner to revisit later. You might also be able to read an easy french book now too. You could just reread a book you've already read in English but translated in French now (again, so you have context; I read Harry Potter for instance)

Learning a new language at an older age was pretty eye-opening. It's definitely harder than I expected but it's so rewarding to be able to connect with a different group of people at a much deeper level, as you also start to understand their culture a lot more, and it gives you access to new movies, shows, theatre, books, music etc. etc.

Good luck on your journey and let me know if you have any Qs!

Never too late. Rote memorisation becomes more difficult as we age, but it's not impossible. I've been learning one of the more difficult languages (Finnish) in my 40s for about 300 days now, and I am making progress.

Look into 'active learning', it's far more effective than apps like DuoLingo (which I use heavily, it does have its place)

I work for the Federal Government of Canada, and for reasons that are hopefully obvious, it's important that they are able to have a pipeline that teaches French to people over the age of 25 in about a year. It's not as simple as just watching media though. The French training for public servants starting at 0 French is a full-time job. People literally disappear from their jobs for a year or more in order to learn French.

Is there a way to access this as a fellow Federal employee (dont wanna elaborate over here)
- Ask your manager. Different departments have different amounts of training available. Also look into the CSPS French training.
  
  At my department, there is also in-house part-time training. It just varies a lot from department to department.
  
  The full-time training I mentioned is usually offered to people who are lined up for a manager/director job since there's the baguette-glass-ceiling
It probably would be a good idea not to publicly identify as a goc worker in a social media forum.
- We're allowed to. We just can't claim to speak for the government.

Too late! What is this? Lol

I'm in my mid-40s, already speak English and Spanish, and I'm picking up Portuguese just because I'm around Brazilian people so damned often up here in Massachusetts.

Of course it's not too late. Having actual conversations in context is the easiest way to kind of passively pick up a new language. You can use apps or Google translate for vocabulary and details

Yes you can, with one caveat.

According to Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis, compelling, comprehensible input is sufficient to acquire a language. That means input that you find interesting and that keeps you engaged, and which you can understand at least in part. That evolving sweet spot can indeed take you from complete newbie to fluency without ever speaking.

In my experience, though, being able to speak with other native speakers is a huge source of motivation and creates its own compelling input. So I wouldn't discount that.

I personally know someone who went from no English to being able to converse just by watching The Simpsons.

Permanently Deleted

Adults are worse at passive learning than kids, but focused learning works just fine. You're probably better off buying/pirating something like rosetta stone than you are watching sitcoms.

As others have said it is never too late to learn a language. Our brains are just as capable, if not more, when we’re adults.

I’m also a firm believer that comprehensible input (listening and attempting to understand) is the best way to learn a language. You can’t start with high level speech though. You need to start with speech that is aimed at beginners or you won’t understand enough for it to be effective.

Studying vocabulary in parallel helps a lot because it helps you learn niche words that don’t come up often in normal speech.

The typical recommendation with comprehensible input is to listen for around a thousand hours and then start practicing with conversation and books as well.

Good luck! Remember that with enough dedicated time you can learn anything. :)

Similar to what the user with fancy letter said, you have to immerse yourself somehow, whether it's travelling to a place where it's regularly spoken and make an effort to speak it, or reading that language books along with a translation until your start recognizing patterns. If you are using a show or other material, you have to ask yourself to try to respond to questions in that language, or make questions that you would ask the show members or writer, etc. like:

De qu'est-ce qu'ils parlent?

Qu'est-ce qui se passe en la dernière partie?

Comment répondrais-je a ce question?

Quel est la message l'auteur (ou le personnage) envoye a moi?

The idea is passive listening will help you kind of understand what people are saying but it will still be difficult to make your own sentences. You have to learn it just like a little kid does.

I comment on jlai.lu and some of the Québecois communities occasionally but I often have to use translate to double check my work, because I'm like shit what was this word again or which grammar form was it? My high school French education was enough to stumble through ordering train tickets in Paris. I have no formal German education but I can grasp simple stuff posted to feddit.de German threads and I'm trying to get better.

I just need to spend a lot more time learning it and likewise you will need to follow up the time you spend passive listening to the French sitcoms with active learning and trying to figure out the language, so you should have additional resources ready to help with that.

ETA: Some of the resources other users suggested like Language Transfer seem interesting, I'll give it a try myself too!

Really good! But let me give you a little help on this;

De quoi est-ce qu'ils parlent?

Qu'est ce qui ce passe durant la dernière partie?

Comment repondrais-je à cette question?

Quel est le message que l'auteur m'envoi?

Those are minor mistakes, keep it on!
- Yeah. That's the spirit of language learning. I'd probably be way better if I spent a year in Québec...
  
  I know Japanese, English fluently, French conversationally, basic Spanish, and now I'm trying German.

Hello,

Feel free to join us on !france@jlai.lu or !forumlibre@jlai.lu (our version of !casualconversation@lemmy.world )

What I’ve found to be helpful is to not learn the words first, but rather learn the sentence formation, and find parallels in your own language. Understanding sentence structure would really help in learning the language, and you can always substitute unknown words with English until you learn them. See how a sentence in your language is translated to that language, and see how the structure is different. Building parallels like this for different types of sentences would really help you learn the language better.

Sounds just like the Language Transfer system it's the best language learning method I've ever encountered, and I speak five languages.

It's a set of MP3s, using a kind of Socratic dialogue to teach language based on the language you already know. Completely free, but please donate if you find it useful.

Language transfer has courses in French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish speakers, German, Swahili, and even one for understanding music theory!
- That sounds really interesting! Thanks for that link.
- The more languages you know the better that system might work I guess, like if you know German then French will we (somewhat) easier because you have already bent your brain to accept the conjugation system. If you know Italian or maybe any other language you'd be used to build phrases in other ways (like backwards sort of).

Anecdotally, I know a few immigrants that learned English through TV at a later age. If you're interested, don't let your age hold you back!

I would say you probably won’t have as much success just listening to something than you would communicating back, no matter how much you immerse yourself. My spoken French is godawful, but my comprehension is good so I can follow along with tv shows and such, but my communication doesn’t improve much as there is no back and forth.

The answer is someplace in the middle. It's not too late, but a year of sitcoms isn't going to do it.

It's likely too late to speak without an accent unless you already speak multiple dissimilar languages fluently.

I went to Germany for summer work while I was at University; I was 24 at the time, due to military service prior to college. I spoke no German when I landed in Munich.

By the time I left Germany, I was 26 and spoke fluently enough to pass as a German from "some other state." So I have some observations about this.

For Americans, German is an easy language. Count the number of credits your college offers for language courses. Spanish will be 2 (maybe 3) credits; German will be 3. French is 4. Russian and Japanese are 5; Mandarin may be 6. That's directly proportional to how hard the language is for native English speakers; it's how many hours of classes you'll have to attend per week for the language. You've picked a moderately hard one, with French.
A month of immersion is worth a year of classes, with a caveat. If you want to learn French, find some temp work in France (or Quebec) and go spend a year working and living there. It will totally pay off.
The caveat? I didn't study German, so I couldn't really write it, and if I had to speak formally the facade would have collapsed. Immersion + study is the best combination.
Such that, when I got back to university, I tried to enter German language courses, and failed. 101 was absurdly easy, and impossible to take. 201 was absurdly hard, and impossible to pass. I could speak fluently, I just couldn't do any bookwork. So, I ended up taking 3 years of French, instead.
Consequently, today - decades later - I can hold a passable casual conversaion in German, but not write letters in it; and I can read French pretty well and make myself understood through writing, but I've yet to find a French person who will acknowledge that they cam understand my spoken French. So, again: immersion plus study.
By the time I finished my last French class, and had my minor in it, I was 28. My advice there is that you should still be able to do it. It just won't be as easy as when you were younger.

IME, you won't pick much French up from sitcoms, and self-directed language courses are best as supplemental material. Move to a French-speaking country and work, and enroll in language classes there immediately. In a year, you'll speak French. In two, if you have a good ear, you might be accused of fluency.

Irrelevant: French is a waste of time.

Don't be ridiculous, you also have to watch Candice Renoir!