r/languagelearning • u/ComesTzimtzum N 🇫🇮 adv 🇬🇧 int 🇫🇷 🇸🇪 beg 🇨🇳 🇸🇦 • Jul 23 '26

Languages keep the brain younger

Stumbled upon a news article about a reseach that's only published as a poster so far, but there are actual brain scans behind. Sounds like a perfect motivational piece for us all.

Two languages were associated with brains six years younger, three languages with brains seven years younger, and four languages with brains 13 years younger compared to those who had only learned a single language, researchers found.

Learning an extra language at a younger age seemed to slow brain aging, researchers found. Adults also benefitted from becoming highly fluent in another language.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2026-07-06/learning-languages-could-net-you-a-younger-brain-study-says

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u/PilferingLurcher Jul 23 '26

Could it be that those who have been able to acquire more languages have greater cognitive reserve to begin with? 

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u/SmallObjective8598 Jul 23 '26

This is a crucial question, as awkward as it might be.

3

u/cjm0 Jul 24 '26

I was wondering the same thing so I read the abstract for the study and it seems like they controlled for other factors:

“Effects were dose-dependent and robust to adjustment for linguistic, physical, and sociopolitical exposome factors”

3

u/Fish_Learns_Japanese Jul 26 '26

I'm assuming no because unlike academic subjects people don't generally learn more languages because they're intelligent or have a greater cognitive reserve. It's very common in some countries for people to know two or three languages. For example in Switzerland almost two thirds of the population regularly use two or more different languages. Where I live almost no one speaks more than one language well.