Learning a new language, taking part in a conversation, understanding the jokes.
Suddenly, the feeling that we are no longer translating, but simply talking.
What a peculiar satisfaction it is to cross that invisible border. A place that was previously accessible to us only through translation suddenly opens a little wider.
Learning another language can remain so rewarding even when technology can translate almost anything for us. Perhaps because understanding the words is only part of what a language gives us.
A workout for the brain
There may also be a health reason for using more than one language.
Researchers have studied what happens to a brain that regularly has to manage two or more linguistic systems.
When multilingual people speak, their brain manages multiple tasks: it has to select the language it needs, manage interference from the others, retrieve the appropriate words and, sometimes, switch from one language to another almost instantaneously.
Research has suggested that this lifelong demanding exercise may contribute to what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve: broadly, the brain’s capacity to cope with age-related changes or pathology while maintaining cognitive function.
One study of more than 800 elderly people found an association between the number of languages spoken and better cognitive performance in later life, even after researchers took into account factors including age, education, and gender. Other studies have looked specifically at dementia.
The results are intriguing.
Several studies have found an association between speaking more than one language and a later appearance of clinical symptoms of dementia.
Some research has also investigated whether speaking three or more languages might provide an additional advantage, but the findings remain inconclusive.
One study found an association between multilingualism and later onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Another large study found that bilingual people developed dementia several years later than monolingual people, but found no additional advantage from speaking more than two languages.
More recent reviews broadly support the possibility that bilingualism and multilingualism contribute to cognitive reserve. This does not mean that speaking several languages prevents Alzheimer’s disease. Rather, some research suggests that multilingualism may help the brain compensate for its effects for longer, delaying the appearance of clinical symptoms.
Speaking the language allows us to stand a little closer.
Another language, another self?
The benefits of another language are definitely not confined to what happens inside the brain only.
There is also the strange question of what happens to us.
Jodie Foster grew up speaking both English and French and has acted in both languages. Over the years, she has described an experience familiar to many people who move comfortably between languages: she does not feel exactly the same in each one.
She even mentioned that she feels like having a completely different personality in French than in English.
Perhaps some of you have experienced something similar: feeling more formal in one language, more direct in another one, or even more willing to speak to strangers.
Part of this may simply come from fluency, or the lack of it.
And every language might carry its own habits with it.
How quickly do we allow ourselves to use someone’s first name? How do we disagree? How much do we soften a request? What constitutes a joke?
Even silence can mean something slightly different from one culture to another.
Learning the language means slowly learning these things as well.
The things translation cannot quite translate
This may explain why knowing another language can change our experience of a country so profoundly.
Of course, we can travel almost anywhere today without speaking the local language. English is widely understood and spoken, and the technology we carry in our smartphones is rapidly making linguistic barriers lower.
But there is a difference between being able to find our way around a place and being able to enter, even partially, its world.
Speaking the language allows us to stand a little closer.
And there is something fascinating about being able to make the linguistic journey towards someone else, rather than always expecting them to make it towards us.
Getting things wrong, even if far from glamorous, reminds us to stay grounded.
Experiencing what it means not to know makes us listen more carefully and learn deeply, through hundreds of very small victories.
Image: A multigenerational gathering of people. Image created through AI.
More than words
Nowadays, with technology at our fingertips, a machine can tell us what someone said.
But was practical necessity ever the best reason to learn a language?
Perhaps this is where the biological and cultural sides of multilingualism unexpectedly meet.
Research asks whether managing several languages may help the brain remain more resilient as we grow older.
Life offers another possibility.
Learning languages keeps asking us to remain beginners. To listen. To make mistakes.
We may exercise the brain in the process.
But we may also exercise something less measurable: our ability to move, however imperfectly, beyond our own point of view.
And every new language gives us another place from which to try.
What language would you still like to learn - and what world might it open to you?
We would be glad to read your thoughts.