[FITZ]

The brains of young children are geared to picking up languages (which is how American children learns to speak English while listening to the incohrent babble of adults).

I don't think it's the brain --- I think adults actually have an advantage in learning a language and can learn just as easily with the immersion method. It's just that adults tend to try to learn in a classroom or with books --- maybe spending one hour a day and then speaking their native language the rest of the day. If an adult would take one or two semesters of a language just for basic grammar rules and some vocabulary and then go live in a foreign country and speak only with the natives never associating with speakers of their own language, they can easily pick up the language.

[muawiyah]

Here's how you do it. You go to a multi-cultural cocktail party. You just kind of hang around until you notice that you understand what folks speaking an otherwise foreign language are saying.

Some people will notice what you are doing and test your facility in your next new language. Others will remain oblivious to the fact that some adults still have the same language learning facility they had as children. That's because they simply do not believe that some people are "different".