TOKYO (AP) — I speak fluent Spanish and started working as a news and sports reporter in Spain, Mexico and Argentina decades ago.
Now I’m reporting from Tokyo. Seven years have passed and I still don’t understand Japanese. My weekly language classes taught me humility, more than anything else.
My current Japanese teacher, Ayaka Ono, estimates that she has tutored about 600 students in 15 years. Most of them are between 20 and 50 years old. I am more than ten years older than her eldest.
“I find that older students take a very, very small step, and then they go backwards,” Mr. Ono (“san” is an honorific in Japanese for respect) told me. “They can’t focus for long. One minute I’m teaching something and the next minute they’ve forgotten it.”
It is known that children learn a second language more easily. In recent years, scientists have studied whether bilingualism can help prevent memory loss and mental acuity that are associated with aging brains. Most research on potential benefits involves people who have spoken two or more languages most of their lives, rather than older learners.
“Science shows that managing two languages in your brain throughout your life makes your brain more efficient, more resilient, and more resistant to cognitive decline,” said Ellen Bialystok, emeritus research professor at York University in Toronto, who is credited with proposing the idea of a possible “bilingual advantage” in the late 1980s.
Good news for seniors like me: It’s worth trying to learn a new language, and not just because it makes it easier to read menus when traveling abroad. Cognitive neuroscientist Bialystok suggests learning a new language at any age, comparing the challenge to word puzzles and brain-training games that are promoted as slowing the onset of dementia.
“It’s a good idea to try to learn a language later in life, but understand that it won’t make you bilingual, and it may be too late to provide the cognitive aging protection that early bilingualism brings,” she told The Associated Press. “However, learning a new language is a stimulating and engaging activity that engages your entire brain, so it’s like a full-body exercise.”
latest research
A large study published in November in the scientific journal Nature Aging shows that speaking multiple languages protects the brain from accelerated aging, and that this effect increases with the number of languages.
The findings, based on a study of 87,149 healthy people aged 51 to 90, “underscore the critical role of multilingualism in promoting healthier aging trajectories,” the authors wrote.
The researchers acknowledged the study’s limitations, including drawing from only 27 European countries with “different linguistic and socio-political backgrounds”.
Bialystok was not involved in the project but studies second language acquisition in children and adults, including whether bilingualism slows the progression of Alzheimer’s disease or aids multitasking and problem-solving. She said the new study “ties all the pieces together.”
“Over the course of a lifetime, the brains of people who manage and use two languages end up being in better shape and more resilient,” she said.
Judith Kroll, a cognitive psychologist who directs the Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, uses the terms “psychokinesis” and “mental somersaults” to describe how the brain processes multiple languages.
She said there have been some efforts to study language learning and its consequences in older adults.
“I would say there’s probably not enough research to date to be absolutely sure about this,” she told The Associated Press. “But the evidence we have is very promising that older adults are definitely able to learn new languages and benefit from learning them.”
More research is needed to understand whether language courses help people maintain certain cognitive abilities in midlife and beyond. Kroll compared the current state of the field to the late 20th century, when the dominant view was that exposing infants and young children to two or more languages would put them at an educational disadvantage.
“What we know now is exactly the opposite,” she said.
Learn languages later in life
In the 1990s, while I was working in Madrid, I visited Spain’s Mediterranean coast. It shocks me how many non-Hispanics there are who have lived in this country for years and can only speak a few words of Spanish.
Now I understand. When I try Japanese, people often respond with disbelief, “How long have you been here?”
I have workarounds for dealing with hostile locales. One is to say “itsumono”. It means “as usual” or “usual.” It’s enough to order your morning coffee from a nearby cafe or lunch from a few regular stops.
By the way, Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to master, along with Arabic, Cantonese, Korean and Mandarin. Romance languages like French, Italian or Spanish are easier.
My once-a-week sessions are hard and one hour is my limit. I use the metaphor that my brain is a closet with not enough empty hangers, and Japanese doesn’t match anything in my closet. For English speakers, the writing system is intimidating, word order is reversed, and politeness is more important than clarity.
In the 4 1/2 years I’ve been reporting from Rio de Janeiro, I’ve relied on portuñol (an impromptu mix of Spanish and Portuguese) and Brazilian patience to get by. The Japanese have no such halfway house. You either say it or you don’t.
My Japanese will never get past preschool level, but classes that overload my brain might do the same thing as my regular weight training that helps maintain my strength.
My Japanese teacher, Mr. Ono, calls language learning apps “better than nothing.” Bialystok said technology can be a useful learning tool, “but progress certainly requires using the language in real situations with other people.”
“If older people try to learn a new language, you won’t be very successful. You won’t become bilingual,” Bialystok said. “But the experience of trying to learn a language is good for your brain. So I would say this. Things that are difficult for your brain are good for your brain. Learning a language, especially later in life, although difficult, is good for your brain.”
