I speak decent Spanish, picked up working several decades ago as a news and sports reporter in Spain, Mexico and Argentina.
Now I report from Tokyo. After seven years, I still can’t grasp Japanese. My weekly language classes have taught me humility more than anything else.
Ayaka Ono, my current Japanese teacher, estimates she’s tutored about 600 students over 15 years. They’ve been mostly between 20 and 50. I’m more than a decade beyond her eldest.
Photo: EPA
“I find older students take tiny, tiny steps and then they fall back,” Ono-san — san is an honorific in Japanese to show respect — tells me. “They can’t focus as long. I teach something one minute and they forget the next.”
It’s well established that children have an easier time learning second languages. In recent years, scientists have studied whether being bilingual may help ward off the memory lapses and reduced mental sharpness that come with an aging brain. Much of the research on the potential benefit involved people who spoke two or more languages for most of their lives, not older adult learners.
“The science shows that managing two languages in your brain — over a lifetime — makes your brain more efficient, more resilient and more protected against cognitive decline,” said Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor emeritus at York University in Toronto who is credited with advancing the idea of a possible “bilingual advantage” in the late 1980s.
There’s good news for older adults like me: Attempting to acquire a new language is worthwhile, and not just because it makes reading a menu easier while traveling abroad. Bialystok, a cognitive neuroscientist, recommends studying a new language at any age, comparing the challenge to word puzzles and brain-training games that are promoted to slow the onset of dementia.
“Trying to learn a language late in life is a great idea, but understand it won’t make you bilingual and is probably too late to provide the protective effects of cognitive aging that come from early bilingualism,” she said. “However, learning a new language is a stimulating and engaging activity that uses all of your brain, so it is like a whole-body exercise.”
THE LATEST RESEARCH
A large study published by the science journal Nature Aging last month suggests that speaking multiple languages protects against more rapid brain aging, and that the effect increases with the number of languages.
The findings, based on research involving 87,149 healthy people ages 51 to 90, “underscore the key role of multilingualism in fostering healthier aging trajectories,” the authors wrote.
Researchers acknowledged the study’s limitations, including a sample population drawn only from 27 European countries with “diverse linguistic and sociopolitical contexts.”
Bialystok was not involved in the project but has researched second-language acquisition in children and adults, including whether being bilingual delays the progression of Alzheimer’s disease or aids in multi-tasking and problem-solving. She said the new study “ties all the pieces together.”
“Over the lifespan, people who have managed and used two languages end up with brains that are in better shape and more resilient,” she said.
Judith Kroll, a cognitive psychologist who heads the Bilingualism, Mind and Brain Lab at the University of California, Irvine, used the expressions “mental athletics” and “mental somersaults” to describe how the brain juggles more than one language.
She said there have been several efforts to examine language learning in older adults and the ramifications.
“I would say there are probably not enough studies to date to be absolutely definitive about this,” she said. “But the evidence we have is very promising, suggesting both that older adults are certainly able to learn new languages and benefit from that learning.”
More studies are needed on whether language lessons help people in midlife and beyond maintain some cognitive abilities. Kroll compared the state of the field to the late 20th century, when the dominant thinking was that exposing infants and young children to two or more languages put them at a educational disadvantage.
“What we know now is the opposite,” she said.
LEARNING A LANGUAGE LATE IN LIFE
I visited Spain’s Mediterranean coast in the 1990s when I worked in Madrid. I was shocked by how many non-Spaniards there had lived in the country for years and could say only a few words in Spanish.
Now I get it. When I attempt Japanese, the reaction is often an incredulous, “And you’ve been here how long?”
I have workarounds to navigate my hostile linguistic environment. One is saying itsumono. It means “the same as always,” or “the usual.” It’s enough to order morning coffee at a neighborhood cafe or lunch at several regular stops.
As an aside, Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to master, along with Arabic, Cantonese, Korean and Mandarin. Romance languages such as French, Italian or Spanish are easier.
My once-a-week class is grueling, and one hour is my limit. I use this analogy: my brain is a closet without enough empty hangers, and Japanese doesn’t go with anything in my wardrobe. The writing system is intimidating for an English speaker, the word order is flipped, and politeness is valued more than clarity.
During the four-and-a-half years I spent reporting from Rio de Janeiro, I got by with Portunol — an improvised blend of Spanish and Portuguese — and the patience of Brazilians. There is no such halfway house for Japanese. You either speak it or you don’t.
I’ll never progress beyond preschool level in Japanese, but overloading my brain with lessons might work in the same way that my regular weight-training sessions help maintain physical strength.
Ono-san, my Japanese teacher, called language-learning apps “better than nothing.” Bialystok said technology can be a useful learning tool, “but progress of course requires using the language in real situations with other people.”
“If old folks try to learn a new language, you are not going to be very successful. You are not going to become bilingual,” Bialystok said. “But the experience of trying to learn the language is good for your brain. So what I say is this. What’s hard for your brain is good for your brain. And learning a language, especially in later life, is hard but good for your brain.”
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