I’m learning German—something I haven’t formally studied since college, during which I also spent a few months living in Berlin. I don’t have immediate plans to move to Germany, and I don’t need it professionally, since everything these days is available in translation. So why am I going through the effort?
Some background: My father was German, having grown up in Berlin. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1938 to escape the Nazis. Despite the persecution, he had fond memories of growing up in the cultural capital of Weimar Republic Germany.
I didn’t hear much German at home, because my mother was Belgian, and her original language was French, so my parents used English as their common tongue.
But a smattering of foreign words here and there—plus my grandparents’ liberal use of Yiddish—accustomed my ear to other languages from an early age. This is a key to “linguistic plasticity”—the ability to understand and pronounce foreign words.
It is said that the best way to become multi-lingual is to hear and use speech as a child—the time when the brain is most amenable to language acquisition. From then on, it’s downhill: opportunities to master foreign languages drop markedly.
The largest study of its kind— an MIT survey of nearly 670 thousand individuals—found:
“The ability to learn a new language, at least grammatically, is strongest until the age of 18 after which there is a precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.”
Experts say the reasons are threefold: One is that by age 18, educational, career, and social demands are such that most people don’t have time to practice foreign languages less useful in their day-to-day lives. This was certainly the case for me—I dabbled in Spanish, French, and German, and studied Hebrew for my Bar Mitzvah, but when I began serious pursuit of a career, language study fell by the wayside.
The second reason is that it is possible that, after one masters a first language, its rules interfere with the ability to learn a second. And finally, neuroscientists believe that brain changes that are completed in late adolescence foreclose learning new speech patterns.
This certainly seems to be the case for people like Claus Schwab and Henry Kissinger who, despite having acquired English later in life, still retained thick, almost comical, German accents.
But my father was an outlier. He arrived in America a refugee at the age of 28, having studied English in Germany, but managed to shake his German accent, which became barely discernible. He claimed that he was motivated by being teased when he was drafted into the U.S. army during World War 2—he got tired of being labeled a “dirty kraut”.
But he also had a “good ear”, as evinced by his ability to hear a tune once and then render it perfectly on the piano. Maybe I inherited some of his language aptitude, which is documented to be partially genetic.
Learning at a later age is not impossible. There are some language phenoms. I recently watched a YouTube of a couple of German teachers interviewing a gal who grew up in Mississippi and only began German study in high school, moved to Germany during college, and got frustrated at having her German friends lapse into English as a preferred communication. She so perfected her German with concerted efforts that her interviewers now say it is virtually impossible to distinguish her from a native German speaker! Marrying a German probably helped.
I can’t aspire to that, but I feel that attempting to master a foreign language is a worthwhile way to maintain cognitive function as one ages. In fact, a recent AP article (“Older adults may struggle to learn a new language, but classes are a worthwhile exercise”) reports:
“A large study published by the science journal Nature Aging in November 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.”
There is certainly evidence that being bilingual helps fend off cognitive decline. A recent study (“A Bilingual Advantage for Episodic Memory in Older Adults”) concluded:
“Bilinguals exhibited better episodic memory than their monolingual peers, recalling significantly more items overall. Within the bilingual group, earlier second language acquisition and more years speaking two languages were associated with better recall. Bilinguals also demonstrated higher executive functioning, and there was evidence that level of executive functioning was related to memory performance. Results indicate that extensive practice controlling two languages may benefit episodic memory in older adults.”
On average, bilingual people are diagnosed with brain degenerative illnesses about four years later than monolinguals.
A word here about language comprehension: Older adults experience more problems distinguishing speech from background noise (the “restaurant effect”), as well as following lines of dialogue spoken hastily in movies or on TV. I find myself frequently turning on closed captioning with subtitles even on shows in English, where the new acting aesthetic favors mumbling over clear enunciation.
That’s not entirely due to hearing loss. Yes, most adults eventually develop deficits in auditory acuity, especially in high frequency ranges, due to age-related deterioration in their ears.
But some of the problem relates to impaired auditory signal processing in the brain.
Language training invokes listening skills which activate auditory centers in multiple brain structures including Wernicke’s speech region, primarily involved in comprehension. Damage to this specialized region, as occurs in a stroke, may result in severe inability to understand language. Conversely, listening attentively to novel linguistic stimuli lights it up, and may amplify connections within it.
I do a lot of things that help me to preserve brain function:
- Adequate Sleep
- Exercise
- Diet
- Supplements
- Purpose and Goals
- Intellectual Stimulation
- Family & Social Engagement
Maintaining mental fitness requires an all-of-the-above approach.
Doing hard things, whether physical or mental, is one of the best ways to maintain optimal cognitive performance. And German is hard. Try learning not just one common gender for noun articles, as in the English “a” and “the”, but three—masculine (“der”), feminine (“die”), and neuter (“das”)! Not only that, but prepositions and noun endings are inflected according to whether they are nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive! Oh, not to mention word length, which can soar, as in compound mashups like:
“Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz” which roughly translated means “beef labeling law”. Then there are the verbs, which after an interminable series of words and clauses, ambush you only at the end of a sentence!
Curiously, I find there’s carryover to my writing and broadcasting. The precision that’s required to access the language region of my brain to learn German improves my memory and makes me more fluid and precise in English expression.
But just as I find the prospect of donning layers and embarking on a long bike ride across hilly terrain in brisk weather daunting (but I do it anyway), so, too, are mental challenges. The natural inclination is to say: “No thanks!” But there’s a payoff: A feeling of mastery and a cultivation of resilience. Forcing ourselves to undertake difficult things is the antidote to inertia, which invariably creeps up on us as we age. It also steels us against the unforeseen adversities that life inevitably deals us.
Watching TV and scrolling endlessly on social media don’t cut it; while relaxing, they have the opposite effect on mental acuity because they are passive.
So whether it’s language learning, trying out for improv, playing a musical instrument or joining a choir, participating in a book discussion group, planting a garden, building scale models, undertaking carpentry projects, taking a challenging adult education course, or trying your hand at painting, sculpture or drawing—all these are brain calisthenics that can keep us cognitively fit for longer.
What’s your challenge?
