Fluency in two or more languages is a powerful but underappreciated “secret weapon” against aging. A large new study has found that people who speak only one language are about twice as likely to experience accelerated aging, while multilingual people have half the risk. The results were published in the journal Nature Aging (16+).
An international team of researchers analyzed data from 86,149 people aged 51 to 90 years from 27 European countries. The results were striking: the protective effect against aging increases with the number of languages a person speaks.
The hypothesis explaining this phenomenon is that “juggling” languages functions as a constant exercise for the brain and creates a certain “cognitive reserve” that slows the decline of both mental and physical abilities.
Like other well-known factors of a healthy lifestyle—strong social connections and regular physical activity—speaking more than one language is a particularly effective way to maintain brain function and vitality. Although the researchers controlled for confounding factors, they found that the protective effect of speaking more than one language remained statistically significant even after controlling for age, physical health, and sociopolitical environment.
These findings are good news for the majority of the world's population, as an estimated 50 to 70 percent of the world's people are bilingual or multilingual.
