CPH is a controversial topic in language acquisition. It needs a lot of research to be totally proved or maybe disproved.
Agree for some limited aspects of spoken language like accent and some 'subtle' syntactical features. However, the developmental window remains open for most language features, as suggested by research. Motivation, opportunity & speed of acquisition might become more restricted with age and thus give the impression of a critical period.
Yes, I agree with the Critical Period Hypothesis. I observed my daughter experiencing a vocabulary explosion between the ages of 2 and 3, and by around 15, she was able to speak the language fluently. There is a theory suggesting that the critical period for language acquisition is related to the brain's plasticity. Moreover, language development goes hand in hand with a child's cognitive understanding of the world.
Joshua Hartshorne and colleagues have conducted a (to my mind) conclusive study on this question: https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/hartshorne_tenenbaum_pinker_a_critical_period_for_second_language_acquisition.pdf
The evidence about the existence of a Critical Period is 'in', so to speak. So it is, technically, no longer a hypothesis, but an empirically substantiated fact.
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