Older adults may struggle to learn a new language but classes are a worthwhile exercise

Authors: STEPHEN WADE

Publisher:

The Seattle Times | Local news, sports, business, politics, entertainment, travel, restaurants and opinion for Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

Published: 12/15/2025

Language:English

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Elon

Good morning matteocapuzzi, I am Elon, and this is Goose Pod for you. Today is Saturday, December 20th. The time is 21:14. We are going to deconstruct the friction between aging brains and new languages. It is a messy, inefficient process, but the payoff is substantial.

Taylor

And I am Taylor! We are diving into a really fascinating narrative today. It is about why older adults struggle so much to learn a new tongue, but why that struggle is actually the hero of the story. It is a worthwhile exercise.

Elon

Let us look at the data first. There was a massive study published in Nature Aging. We are talking about 87,149 participants across 27 European countries. The scale is significant. The findings are stark. If you are multilingual, you are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological aging.

Taylor

That is an incredible statistic. It is like unlocking a cheat code for your brain. But the article also tells this very human story of an AP reporter in Tokyo. He has been there seven years, and he still cannot grasp Japanese. He says his weekly classes teach him humility more than vocabulary.

Elon

Humility is useful, but cognitive resistance is better. Judith Kroll, a cognitive psychologist, calls this process mental athletics. It is not just learning words. It is mental somersaults. You are forcing the brain to juggle competing systems. That friction is exactly what you want.

Taylor

Right, and the reporter’s teacher, Ono-san, notes that older students take tiny steps and then fall back. They forget things instantly. But Ellen Bialystok, who is a legend in this field, says that managing two languages makes the brain more resilient. It is about efficiency over a lifetime.

Elon

It is interesting you mention Bialystok. We need to contextualize this. Back in the mid-20th century, the dominant thinking was completely backward. They thought exposing kids to two languages was a disadvantage. They thought it confused the hardware. It wasn't until the late 80s that the science flipped.

Taylor

I love that shift in the narrative. It went from a subtractive view, where you lose capacity, to an additive one. Bialystok showed that the bilingual brain has better executive function. It is constantly inhibiting one language to use the other. It is like having a super-strong filter that never turns off.

Elon

Exactly. It is inhibitory control. But for the older learner, the hardware is different. The reporter used this analogy I actually found somewhat accurate. He said his brain is a closet without enough empty hangers. Japanese does not go with anything in his existing wardrobe. The writing system is intimidating, and the logic is flipped.

Taylor

That is such a vivid image. And it makes sense why Japanese is harder for an English speaker than, say, Spanish or French. But the research shows that even if you don't have those hangers, building the closet itself is the workout. It contributes to cognitive reserve, which delays symptoms of Alzheimer's.

Elon

Yes, but we have to be precise. The study in Nature Aging used a biobehavioral age gap metric. They found monolinguals were twice as likely to have a high age gap. That means their bodies were aging faster than their chronological age. The multilinguals had a buffer. It is a protective shield.

Taylor

But here is where the plot thickens. If it is so good for us, why is the success rate for older learners so low? The article points out that we are teaching older adults the wrong way. We treat them like slow children, using lecture-based models that rely on rote memorization.

Elon

It is a fundamental design failure. Memorization is the very faculty that declines with age. You cannot brute force it. Younger brains are sponges, older brains are crystalline. They need context. If you just throw vocabulary lists at a 60-year-old, you are wasting their time and your resources.

Taylor

Totally. Older adulthood has what researchers call psychological depth. They need to connect new ideas to their life experience. If the lesson does not tap into their search for meaning or connection, they check out. It needs to be active engagement, not just listening to a teacher talk.

Elon

The reporter admits he uses workarounds. He just says itsumono, which means the usual. He is hacking the system to survive. But Bialystok says that while technology and apps are better than nothing, you need the real-world pressure. You need the threat of social failure to really engage the brain.

Taylor

So, what is the endgame here? Bialystok is pretty blunt. She says if you start late, you will not become bilingual. You are not going to get that seamless fluency. But she argues that the attempt itself is the win. It is a whole-body exercise for the brain.

Elon

I respect the realism. It is not about the output, it is about the load. What is hard for your brain is good for your brain. It is like lifting heavy weights. You do not do it to move the iron, you do it to tear the muscle so it grows back stronger. That is what language struggle is.

Taylor

And that struggle has real-world stakes. The research suggests this can delay the onset of dementia. It doesn't stop the disease, but it keeps you functioning longer. It is about maintaining that mental sharpness so you can keep driving, keep managing your life, and keep connecting with people.

Elon

Looking forward, the takeaway is clear. Do not wait for the perfect time. The evidence suggests that even just living in a multilingual society helps because your brain has to process different acoustic signals. But active engagement is key. We need to redesign how we learn as we age.

Taylor

Absolutely. And for you, matteocapuzzi, the lesson is to embrace the awkwardness. If you are learning something new and it feels impossible, that means it is working. It is supposed to be hard. That mental friction is literally keeping your brain young.

Elon

Precisely. Embrace the difficulty. That is the end of today's discussion. Thank you for listening to Goose Pod. See you tomorrow.

Taylor

Bye! Keep learning!

Learning a new language as an older adult is challenging but beneficial. While fluency may be difficult, the cognitive "friction" of struggling with a new language strengthens the brain, delaying aging and potentially preventing dementia. Effective learning methods should engage older adults' life experience rather than relying on rote memorization.

Read original at The Seattle Times | Local news, sports, business, politics, entertainment, travel, restaurants and opinion for Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. →

TOKYO (AP) — 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.“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 told The Associated Press. “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 researchA 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.

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 told The AP. “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 later in lifeI 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 4 1/2 years I spent reporting from Rio de Janeiro, I got by with Portuñol — 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.”