Why speaking French is good for your brain
Learning a new language can improve brain health and even delay the onset of dementia
Speaking a second language can boost brain health
Jo Panuwat D/Shutterstock
Learning French is one of the best ways to integrate when you move to France. But did you know it could also improve your overall brain health?
Studies have shown speaking more than one language regularly can improve brain function and even delay the onset of dementia by up to five years.
“It would seem though that using a second language on a regular basis is good for the brain. Indeed, some studies have shown that multilinguals develop dementia later than their monolingual counterparts,” Dr Caitlin Ware, research engineer at Broca hospital in Paris who studies bilingualism and brain health, tells The Connexion.
“Speaking a second language improves executive functioning, that is, attentional capacities and working memory, task-switching, and cognitive inhibition,” she says.
A landmark 2007 study found people with dementia were likely to develop symptoms, on average, four years later than people who spoke one language. Several subsequent studies have also found evidence that bilingual people develop dementia symptoms four to five years later than monolingual people.
This is thought to be because they have a greater cognitive reserve, meaning their brains are more resilient to the damage taking place because of dementia, according to Alzeimer’s UK.
“It probably has made my mind sharper, especially when translating between the two languages,” says a Connexion colleague, who started learning French when he moved to France in 2020.
Read more: Mental benefits of learning French depend on using it in real life
“Differences in cognitive scores have been evidenced in children and older adults, with multilinguals showing a cognitive advantage in attentional scores, cognitive inhibition, and working memory,” says Dr Ware.
Cognitive inhibition is the process of blocking out one language when speaking another and is linked to better executive functioning.
However, she notes the advantages of second language use vary from study to study, and are not always shown in bilingual people.
The younger the better? Not necessarily
While it is often said to be preferable to learn a language as a child, when you are better able to soak up new information, learning a language as an adult can have different benefits.
“Although those who learn a language later in life are rarely able to speak without an accent, there are definite benefits of learning a language after childhood,” says Dr Ware.
Read more: Nine reasons to learn French
“It is more challenging to learn a language later, and this can prove beneficial to the brain. Although there are only a few studies on the subject, it would seem that second language learning in older adults promotes neuroplasticity,” she says.
“It’s difficult to compare one person with another. But one of the first things you notice as you get older is names or words that won’t come when needed. So it stands to reason that playing with words, learning new words, translating from one language to another would exercise exactly that part of the brain that most needs it,” says Claire Campbell, who has been teaching French for over 30 years and has lived in France since 2006.
