6 ms·

Multilingual experience linked to delayed aging

49 points by bookofjoe 4mo ago

thisoneisreal 4mo ago
One thing I've never seen discussed on this topic (possible I just missed it, I only read popular accounts) is whether speaking multiple languages is a proxy for higher sociability / stronger social ties. That's a known dimension that improves health and aging and I wonder if just being able or interested in speaking with a broader swath of people is what helps more than the cognitive demands of switching.
- comrade1234 4mo ago
  Learning German hasn't made me more sociable.
  - westurner 4mo ago
    But there was neurogenesis. And, just thinking about other cultures
    - fluoridation 4mo ago
      But it still counters the claim that multilingualism is a proxy for high sociability. I speak two languages (and I'm working on a third) and most days I don't speak to anyone.
      - westurner 4mo ago
        99% of users are lurkers. I also find myself exercising verbal skills possibly unnecessarily (with a language learning app that's certainly not immersion) but probably predictably. I've heard that they say to exercise mental arithmetic skills if stranded on a desert island with no reading material; and that it's normal to develop self dialogue in solitary
  - CalRobert 4mo ago
    sounds like you integrated well!
- elpakal 4mo ago
  Raised multilingual here (as in father spoke one, mother spoke another, living abroad and US back and forth). I don't know about the stronger social ties but I have found that thinking in a different language helps me get to sleep easier. There are times when I'm spinning around in webs in English (work, life etc) at night, and when I switch over to Spanish thoughts I fall asleep easier. Maybe just stuff like that is enough to make a difference.
  - HPsquared 4mo ago
    That's nice, like the brain switching to "home mode" maybe?
  - barrenko 4mo ago
    Learned some french recently, heavy bouts of insomnia due to moving / stress - I will try this advice exactly this night.
  - cyberax 4mo ago
    Switching into another language also helps if you are stuck in an environment where you do not want to pay attention (e.g. on a bus with blaring ads that you can't mute or with a rude neighbor yapping on their phone).
  - iLemming 4mo ago
    > helps me get to sleep easier I grew up speaking multiple languages. My monolingual friend once asked in which language I dream, and I said - "not sure, I think in all three different ones I'm currently fluent". "But how do you know?", he kept pressing. "Ah, well, they come with subtitles", I joked. But since then I often wonder, how do we recognize a language in our dreams?
    - inigyou 4mo ago
      I think my dreams use semantic vectors that come with a tag saying they came from sensory input even though they didn't. I am mostly monolingual but I would expect them to come with a language tag too. I believe a dream about Bob talking about cats in Spanish would directly activate your neural network like V_cats + V_spanish + V_bob_is_talking without activating the parts that would decode auditory input into that semantic vector.
- markerz 4mo ago
  In my world, most multilingual speakers are children of immigrant families, and that transcends socio-economic boundaries. Plenty of immigrants were already wealthy before coming to the SF Bay Area, where we import highly educated, specialized workers. On the other hand, we also import physical laborers who are also generally multilingual but not in the same social class. Some of these immigrants are very well supported with a strong social network, while others struggle with isolation.
  - paulsutter 4mo ago
    On first reading I assumed you meant the physical laborers would have the stronger social network, and the wealthy would be more isolated (true in my experience). But you may have meant just the opposite! In fact it's two separate questions because it can go both ways, heavily. Interesting food for thought, thanks for posting.
- timr 4mo ago
  > One thing I've never seen discussed on this topic (possible I just missed it, I only read popular accounts) is whether speaking multiple languages is a proxy for higher sociability / stronger social ties. Yes. This is exactly what you should be asking with this kind of stuff. The research is hopelessly confounded by social status traits that correlate with wealth. And before anyone says it, the abstract claiming "adjustment for linguistic, physical, and sociopolitical exposome factors" is fine, but it's essentially impossible to control for something as pervasive as the effects of wealth, without randomization. There are also factors -- like the culture you grew up in -- that are equally difficult to control. For example, if your dataset has only X multi-lingual Americans, and 1000x multi-lingual Western Europeans, no amount of statistical massage will correct for the imbalance.
TFNA 4mo ago
Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in its nascent phase, and China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programmes at its unis because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. It’s already becoming a niche hobby when many developed-country Gen Z are content with traveling and working abroad with only a knowledge of English alongside their native language.
- asveikau 4mo ago
  I think any multilingual person will be skeptical of your analysis. Translation is not a substitute for understanding the original. It's good that we have translations, but it isn't the same. As you get into consuming art, literature, poetry, commentary, this is relevant.
  - TFNA 4mo ago
    Learning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the original language could be important), and poetry themselves are niche hobbies.
    - asveikau 4mo ago
      I don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.
      - TFNA 4mo ago
        Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).
ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
> Dr Amoruso said: “In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age. The effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain ageing. This suggests that multilingual experience matters as a gradient: it is not simply about being bilingual or not, but about the depth and duration of language experience.” https://www.fens.org/news-activities/news/speaking-another-language-could-slow-ageing-in-the-brain https://www.fens.org/news-activities/news/speaking-another-l...
Eisenstein 4mo ago
Some peer criticism from: Vanhove, J. (2026). Does multilingualism really protect against accelerated ageing? Critical comments on Amoruso et al. (2025). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1–10. "As the authors correctly point out in their discussion, their observational study does not allow them to establish any causal links between the degree of multilingualism in a country and the extent to which its inhabitants show signs of accelerated ageing. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have kept this insight in mind when they came up with the title (‘Multilingualism protects …’) and the abstract (‘These results underscore the protective role of multilingualism …’) that grabbed the media's attention." "The authors use country-level data on multilingualism, namely the estimated percentage of monolinguals in the country (the Mono variable in BAG_OR_cross.csv), the estimated percentage of people in the country who know exactly one additional language (One), those who know exactly two additional languages (Two), and those who know at least three additional languages (Three), always at the time of data collection." "According to a simple OLS regression model at the country level with the monolingualism percentage as its sole predictor, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.36 years (some 133 days; 95% CI: (58,207) days). If log-per-capita GDP is controlled for, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.29 years (some 105 days; 95% CI: (22,188) days)."
fusslo 4mo ago
totally off topic. I noticed the banner photo ( https://fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/img/logo.e8cd4ff2.png https://fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/img/logo.e8cd4ff... ) load noticeably slow. It's 1,790.16 KB (1,833,122 bytes), which is ~800,000 bytes larger than the code space of the main microprocessor of the product I'm working on.
inigyou 4mo ago
It is also known that programming languages are treated by your brain similarly to human languages. But it is not known whether this means make your brain younger.

49 points by bookofjoe 4mo ago

One thing I've never seen discussed on this topic (possible I just missed it, I only read popular accounts) is whether speaking multiple languages is a proxy for higher sociability / stronger social ties. That's a known dimension that improves health and aging and I wonder if just being able or interested in speaking with a broader swath of people is what helps more than the cognitive demands of switching.

comrade1234 4mo ago
Learning German hasn't made me more sociable.
- westurner 4mo ago
  But there was neurogenesis. And, just thinking about other cultures
  - fluoridation 4mo ago
    But it still counters the claim that multilingualism is a proxy for high sociability. I speak two languages (and I'm working on a third) and most days I don't speak to anyone.
    - westurner 4mo ago
      99% of users are lurkers. I also find myself exercising verbal skills possibly unnecessarily (with a language learning app that's certainly not immersion) but probably predictably. I've heard that they say to exercise mental arithmetic skills if stranded on a desert island with no reading material; and that it's normal to develop self dialogue in solitary
- CalRobert 4mo ago
  sounds like you integrated well!
elpakal 4mo ago
Raised multilingual here (as in father spoke one, mother spoke another, living abroad and US back and forth). I don't know about the stronger social ties but I have found that thinking in a different language helps me get to sleep easier. There are times when I'm spinning around in webs in English (work, life etc) at night, and when I switch over to Spanish thoughts I fall asleep easier. Maybe just stuff like that is enough to make a difference.
- HPsquared 4mo ago
  That's nice, like the brain switching to "home mode" maybe?
- barrenko 4mo ago
  Learned some french recently, heavy bouts of insomnia due to moving / stress - I will try this advice exactly this night.
- cyberax 4mo ago
  Switching into another language also helps if you are stuck in an environment where you do not want to pay attention (e.g. on a bus with blaring ads that you can't mute or with a rude neighbor yapping on their phone).
- iLemming 4mo ago
  > helps me get to sleep easier I grew up speaking multiple languages. My monolingual friend once asked in which language I dream, and I said - "not sure, I think in all three different ones I'm currently fluent". "But how do you know?", he kept pressing. "Ah, well, they come with subtitles", I joked. But since then I often wonder, how do we recognize a language in our dreams?
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    I think my dreams use semantic vectors that come with a tag saying they came from sensory input even though they didn't. I am mostly monolingual but I would expect them to come with a language tag too. I believe a dream about Bob talking about cats in Spanish would directly activate your neural network like V_cats + V_spanish + V_bob_is_talking without activating the parts that would decode auditory input into that semantic vector.
markerz 4mo ago
In my world, most multilingual speakers are children of immigrant families, and that transcends socio-economic boundaries. Plenty of immigrants were already wealthy before coming to the SF Bay Area, where we import highly educated, specialized workers. On the other hand, we also import physical laborers who are also generally multilingual but not in the same social class. Some of these immigrants are very well supported with a strong social network, while others struggle with isolation.
- paulsutter 4mo ago
  On first reading I assumed you meant the physical laborers would have the stronger social network, and the wealthy would be more isolated (true in my experience). But you may have meant just the opposite! In fact it's two separate questions because it can go both ways, heavily. Interesting food for thought, thanks for posting.
timr 4mo ago
> One thing I've never seen discussed on this topic (possible I just missed it, I only read popular accounts) is whether speaking multiple languages is a proxy for higher sociability / stronger social ties. Yes. This is exactly what you should be asking with this kind of stuff. The research is hopelessly confounded by social status traits that correlate with wealth. And before anyone says it, the abstract claiming "adjustment for linguistic, physical, and sociopolitical exposome factors" is fine, but it's essentially impossible to control for something as pervasive as the effects of wealth, without randomization. There are also factors -- like the culture you grew up in -- that are equally difficult to control. For example, if your dataset has only X multi-lingual Americans, and 1000x multi-lingual Western Europeans, no amount of statistical massage will correct for the imbalance.

TFNA 4mo ago

Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in its nascent phase, and China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programmes at its unis because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. It’s already becoming a niche hobby when many developed-country Gen Z are content with traveling and working abroad with only a knowledge of English alongside their native language.

asveikau 4mo ago
I think any multilingual person will be skeptical of your analysis. Translation is not a substitute for understanding the original. It's good that we have translations, but it isn't the same. As you get into consuming art, literature, poetry, commentary, this is relevant.
- TFNA 4mo ago
  Learning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the original language could be important), and poetry themselves are niche hobbies.
  - asveikau 4mo ago
    I don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.
    - TFNA 4mo ago
      Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).

ChrisArchitect 4mo ago

> Dr Amoruso said: “In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age. The effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain ageing. This suggests that multilingual experience matters as a gradient: it is not simply about being bilingual or not, but about the depth and duration of language experience.” https://www.fens.org/news-activities/news/speaking-another-language-could-slow-ageing-in-the-brain https://www.fens.org/news-activities/news/speaking-another-l...

Eisenstein 4mo ago

Some peer criticism from: Vanhove, J. (2026). Does multilingualism really protect against accelerated ageing? Critical comments on Amoruso et al. (2025). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1–10. "As the authors correctly point out in their discussion, their observational study does not allow them to establish any causal links between the degree of multilingualism in a country and the extent to which its inhabitants show signs of accelerated ageing. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have kept this insight in mind when they came up with the title (‘Multilingualism protects …’) and the abstract (‘These results underscore the protective role of multilingualism …’) that grabbed the media's attention." "The authors use country-level data on multilingualism, namely the estimated percentage of monolinguals in the country (the Mono variable in BAG_OR_cross.csv), the estimated percentage of people in the country who know exactly one additional language (One), those who know exactly two additional languages (Two), and those who know at least three additional languages (Three), always at the time of data collection." "According to a simple OLS regression model at the country level with the monolingualism percentage as its sole predictor, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.36 years (some 133 days; 95% CI: (58,207) days). If log-per-capita GDP is controlled for, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.29 years (some 105 days; 95% CI: (22,188) days)."

fusslo 4mo ago

totally off topic. I noticed the banner photo ( https://fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/img/logo.e8cd4ff2.png https://fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/img/logo.e8cd4ff... ) load noticeably slow. It's 1,790.16 KB (1,833,122 bytes), which is ~800,000 bytes larger than the code space of the main microprocessor of the product I'm working on.

inigyou 4mo ago

It is also known that programming languages are treated by your brain similarly to human languages. But it is not known whether this means make your brain younger.