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Language Is Brain Candy

February 19, 2015 •

Bilingual Skills = Food for the Brain

I’ve begun bal­anc­ing my phys­i­cal prac­tice (yoga and PT exer­cises) with some juicy food for the brain —  relearn­ing a sec­ond lan­guage… Here’s why.

Last sum­mer the BBC and NPR sum­ma­rized med­ical research into activ­i­ties that can make even adult brains more resilient and youth­ful. Learn­ing and speak­ing a sec­ond lan­guage on a reg­u­lar basis can slow down the aging of your brain. (There’s clin­i­cal evi­dence for these asser­tions.)

Actively using a sec­ond lan­guage has been proven to post­pone or reduce the onset of Alzheimer’s or demen­tia by five years or so.

Unfor­tu­nately for for­mer lan­guage majors like me, there’s no last­ing impact from col­lege stud­ies, if you don’t actively use — or prac­tice — a sec­ond lan­guage in your nor­mal daily life.

Use It or Lose It

The NPR and BBC broad­casts were a wake-up call; I was once flu­ent in French, semi-flu­ent in Span­ish. I had even passed the entrance exam to the Sor­bonne, a rare accom­plish­ment for an Amer­i­can stu­dent with­out a French par­ent. But that was then…

Since col­lege I have had few occa­sions to prac­tice French or Span­ish. Ear­lier in my career I worked at a cou­ple of French trade shows, and hosted some French speak­ers who were meet­ing with my employer.

These days my French and Span­ish skills have largely evap­o­rated, for lack of use. Some for­eign travel, lots of movies, but no sus­tained prac­tice.

The good news: My oral com­pre­hen­sion gets much bet­ter after a few weeks’ immer­sion, espe­cially for French, my stronger lan­guage; the bad news: vocab­u­lary recall and verb con­ju­ga­tions have dis­ap­peared into the ether.

Mexican-basket-weaver

¡Hola! Buenas dias.

I’m start­ing to fight back, start­ing with Span­ish — a prac­ti­cal and arguably more use­ful lan­guage for Amer­i­cans. As much as I love French, it’s hard to argue about the prac­ti­cal­ity of Span­ish for peo­ple who live on this side of the Atlantic.

My hus­band and I have decided to vaca­tion in Mex­ico this spring, partly because it’s eas­ier to visit Mex­ico from here, and partly because it’s the per­fect excuse to relearn Span­ish.

I pulled the trig­ger and invested in a multi-media begin­ner-to-advanced lan­guage course. The drill-and-prac­tice disk is now in the CD player.

I’ve begun with basic writ­ten and oral exer­cises. I’ve fin­ished les­son 2, “la gente y la familia,” and am now mov­ing up to num­bers. If all goes well, I’ll be able to han­dle basic inter­ac­tions in Sayulita this year.

Context versus Content

Relearn­ing this lan­guage is prov­ing to be a curi­ous expe­ri­ence. I find myself remem­ber­ing many of the sub­tleties: the rules of gram­mar, verb tenses and gen­der-match­ing, but I’ve for­got­ten most of the words.

I know when to use the sub­junc­tive or the past present tense, but not how to con­ju­gate a verb into those tenses. I also under­stand that these more nuanced expres­sions are less and less com­mon in daily par­lance.

So I have retained the con­text, but lost the con­tent. Iron­i­cally, the con­cepts that are hard­est for native Eng­lish speak­ers to grasp are clear to me, because I still remem­ber the “algo­rithms” for the Span­ish lan­guage… In this regard my for­mer French skills make it eas­ier to relearn Span­ish.

Mañana

As for my hus­band, who never took any Span­ish classes, he plans to defer lan­guage learn­ing until retire­ment. His Ger­man skills are rusty, his French skills good enough to fol­low my slow con­ver­sa­tions…

In the mean­time he’s hope­ful that I’ll be able to serve as our joint lin­guis­tic chauf­feur to Mex­ico and else­where.

Estoy apren­di­endo español.

Trackbacks

  1. Learning Spanish Again says:
    March 10, 2015 at 6:20 pm

    […] month I began one of my big projects for 2015, relearn­ing Span­ish. I started down this path for sev­eral rea­sons, includ­ing the […]

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Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

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Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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