Nows and Forevers

Maybe the last two years of intensive language study have had an extra added benefit. It may help stave off dementia.
The study published recently in the academic journal Neurobiology of Aging is yet more proof that regularly speaking a second language from when you’re younger helps you when you’re older.
It didn’t look at people like me, who picked up another language when we were older. Instead, it studied people who spoke two languages daily beginning when they were youth, and how that helped their memory and recall tasks. And they used MRIs and cognitive assessments to do that.
What did it find? That if you are bilingual, you’re generally better off as you get older when it comes to remembering and using your brain.
“Bilingualism may act as protective factor against cognitive decline and dementia,” the authors conclude. “In particular, we observed that speaking 2 languages daily, especially in the early and middle life stages might have a long-lasting effect on cognition and its neural correlates.”
It wasn’t the reason I began studying languages — well, one language in particular — a few years ago. But I will admit that the effort also helped use more of my brain, in different ways than I was used to, and that has I think paid dividends beyond expressing myself in another language.
Although that has been cool, too.
I have been, for the most part, monolinguistic. I spent my entire middle and high school years, along with college, studying French and, living so close to Quebec, I got to use it a fair amount. But I never really kept up with it and I never really took the next step, which was thinking and writing profusely in French. So it went away, for the most part. I can help my daughter with her French homework, that’s about it.
But it wasn’t until I began to study Welsh via Learn Welsh/Dysgu Cymraeg — in intensive classes over Teams and Zoom — that I really could say I was bilingual. For hours upon hours a week — between 10 and 15 hours a week in class, all in the early morning hours East Coast US time, sometimes seven days a week — I went through the first two years of Cymraeg and into my third year. I can honestly say that it was one of the most profound learning experiences of my life: the language, the history and culture I absorbed, the tutors and the students I met. They were friends not just online but offline, and I’ve visited with several on my trips to Wales since.
Some day I’ll write about how wonderful an experience it was.
But beyond all that, I learned something very valuable about myself: That I had more of my brain that I could use and that I could tackle something quite difficult and unexpected, and succeed. It wasn’t easy, and I was definitely not the most facile learner. There are some days that I woke up and went into a cold sweat with all that I had in my brain and all that slipped out in Cymraeg. But there were other days and nights when I would wake up in the middle of a dream in Welsh.
I wasn’t the only one who was older who was learning Welsh. In fact, there were many students in my classes and special sessions who were in their 60s, their 70s, their 80s and who were absolutely passionate and talented students. They were, and are, inspirations. And more than one of them told me that they were studying not only because they wanted to learn Cymraeg, but because they wanted to push back against the potential for dementia.
For reasons that this new study makes clear.