If you've ever wondered why a child who still uses diapers and is shorter than your dog runs circles around you when it comes to learning one or more languages effortlessly —while still struggling with shoelaces and holding their pee (pause to breathe)— whereas you, able to solve the most intricate tasks in the most complex arenas, feel like stringing together just a few words in your target language is a pipe dream, so have I. Many times. But we're not alone. Professor Noam Chomsky has been asking himself that same question for decades. His linguistic theory gave the concept of first language acquisition —which had largely been understood as a social phenomenon until then— a Copernican turn.

It turns out that we're born with a kind of in-built linguistic “organ”* for this purpose. Yeah, you too —it just doesn’t show up on X-rays. It makes us little language sponges in the early years of childhood, a time when we can’t even do basic math or draw mommy without making her look like she hasn’t eaten in months.

A few years later, when we can actually communicate and go to school, that's when we're formally taught reading and writing (two out of the four skills that make up learning a language). But neuroplasticity tends to change after puberty. I guess that’s why native-like pronunciation is harder to achieve after twelve. It’s like we go through a shifting pattern in life: we get really good at picking up certain complex skills as we grow up, while language learning tends to get less automatic, as if our own nature would switch on or off some of our capabilities depending on the stage of our life. Nature doesn't know about socio-cutural trends, just follows its own rules.

That makes this "organ" the Holy Grail of second-language learning. So don’t beat yourself up. There’s nothing wrong with your brain. It’s just that, in a way, there’s a time window for every skill we develop at each stage of life (like talking, eating solid food, crawling, walking, having a growth spurt, etc.) for those skills to feel like second nature to us.

* "organ" = faculty of language