[Athena E.]

Fact of the Day: Learning a second language can make you smarter​

Want to keep your mind sharp as you age? Try learning a second language! It’s never too late — and science backs it up. Studies show that picking up a new language can boost memory, improve focus, and even delay cognitive decline.

Why? Because learning another language gives your brain a workout — like a crossword puzzle, but with even more benefits! Plus, it opens up new ways to connect with people and cultures around the world.

Whether it’s a few words of Spanish, French, Italian — or even brushing up on a language you once knew — your brain will thank you for it.

Do you speak another language? Or have tips for learning one later in life? Share them with us!

Source: TED-Ed / YouTube​

 

[Dor jar]

Greek

 

[Leodalion63]

When I was 25 years old I found a Auslan sign language course in Frankston. My teacher was born deaf and he got sent to a hearing public school. He learn to lip read, but no sign language.
It is the same story as mine. But then all parents were told that deafness is a sickness that can be cured. As we know now that is just a lot of hogwash. ( that means more to the person who has the deafness ).
While I was learning Auslan 1 & 2, I met other people who were deaf, people my own age who wears hearing aids. Don't get me wrong it was always wonderful growing up and talking to the older generation who wore the aids and having a really good laugh together. I had never met anybody young like myself who wore aids as well.

So back then in learning there was Auslan 1, 2 & 3. I was able to do the first 2 but the 3rd course it didn't work out for me as I had to sign listening to the radio which it's no good and or sign while watching TV, which back then no subtitles. The radio and TV people speaking sounded like a different language.
I may have forgotten a lot of signs now, that's ok for me as I still remember the alphabet.
But out of the whole journey at that time, it felt really good to finally meet others like me and watching in how communicating with others in signing, facial expressions and body language.
I have to add my teacher told us in how he met his wife. She is deaf, went to a deaf school, didn't learn lip reading and learnt Auslan, met my teacher who in turn taught him everything he needed to know in signing in turn still teaching Auslan sign language.

I may not be able to learn other languages from other countries, but what I learnt in everything about myself and others like me was the best experience I will always hold close to my heart.

 

[SirExton]

I speak Lancastrian, the Queens English.
"Has ta got thi cloggs on't feet, an't flat cap on't thed lad? Thur's trubal at Mill!"

 

[gordon1940]

I speak fluent Antartican and all Dialects.

 

[SirExton]

I speak fluent Antartican and all Dialects.

Serves U right! Ha! Ha!

 

[Jest]

i do not speak nasal australian

 

[Jest]

When I was 25 years old I found a Auslan sign language course in Frankston. My teacher was born deaf and he got sent to a hearing public school. He learn to lip read, but no sign language.
It is the same story as mine. But then all parents were told that deafness is a sickness that can be cured. As we know now that is just a lot of hogwash. ( that means more to the person who has the deafness ).
While I was learning Auslan 1 & 2, I met other people who were deaf, people my own age who wears hearing aids. Don't get me wrong it was always wonderful growing up and talking to the older generation who wore the aids and having a really good laugh together. I had never met anybody young like myself who wore aids as well.

So back then in learning there was Auslan 1, 2 & 3. I was able to do the first 2 but the 3rd course it didn't work out for me as I had to sign listening to the radio which it's no good and or sign while watching TV, which back then no subtitles. The radio and TV people speaking sounded like a different language.
I may have forgotten a lot of signs now, that's ok for me as I still remember the alphabet.
But out of the whole journey at that time, it felt really good to finally meet others like me and watching in how communicating with others in signing, facial expressions and body language.
I have to add my teacher told us in how he met his wife. She is deaf, went to a deaf school, didn't learn lip reading and learnt Auslan, met my teacher who in turn taught him everything he needed to know in signing in turn still teaching Auslan sign language.

I may not be able to learn other languages from other countries, but what I learnt in everything about myself and others like me was the best experience I will always hold close to my heart.

not to worry, i think you are marvellous.

 

[Viellarde]

When I was 25 years old I found a Auslan sign language course in Frankston. My teacher was born deaf and he got sent to a hearing public school. He learn to lip read, but no sign language.
It is the same story as mine. But then all parents were told that deafness is a sickness that can be cured. As we know now that is just a lot of hogwash. ( that means more to the person who has the deafness ).
While I was learning Auslan 1 & 2, I met other people who were deaf, people my own age who wears hearing aids. Don't get me wrong it was always wonderful growing up and talking to the older generation who wore the aids and having a really good laugh together. I had never met anybody young like myself who wore aids as well.

So back then in learning there was Auslan 1, 2 & 3. I was able to do the first 2 but the 3rd course it didn't work out for me as I had to sign listening to the radio which it's no good and or sign while watching TV, which back then no subtitles. The radio and TV people speaking sounded like a different language.
I may have forgotten a lot of signs now, that's ok for me as I still remember the alphabet.
But out of the whole journey at that time, it felt really good to finally meet others like me and watching in how communicating with others in signing, facial expressions and body language.
I have to add my teacher told us in how he met his wife. She is deaf, went to a deaf school, didn't learn lip reading and learnt Auslan, met my teacher who in turn taught him everything he needed to know in signing in turn still teaching Auslan sign language.

I may not be able to learn other languages from other countries, but what I learnt in everything about myself and others like me was the best experience I will always hold close to my heart.

A young teenage deaf and mute boy taught me his alphabet (auslan maybe?) nearly 60yrs ago. He befriended a small group of us travelling to work daily on the same train carriage. I used the alphabet a year later to help a young man on a train from Sydney to Melbourne, and again decades later, to warn some disrespectful youth on a tram that I would report them to the Head of their school if they didn't behave.

 

[Lynne]

When I was 25 years old I found a Auslan sign language course in Frankston. My teacher was born deaf and he got sent to a hearing public school. He learn to lip read, but no sign language.
It is the same story as mine. But then all parents were told that deafness is a sickness that can be cured. As we know now that is just a lot of hogwash. ( that means more to the person who has the deafness ).
While I was learning Auslan 1 & 2, I met other people who were deaf, people my own age who wears hearing aids. Don't get me wrong it was always wonderful growing up and talking to the older generation who wore the aids and having a really good laugh together. I had never met anybody young like myself who wore aids as well.

So back then in learning there was Auslan 1, 2 & 3. I was able to do the first 2 but the 3rd course it didn't work out for me as I had to sign listening to the radio which it's no good and or sign while watching TV, which back then no subtitles. The radio and TV people speaking sounded like a different language.
I may have forgotten a lot of signs now, that's ok for me as I still remember the alphabet.
But out of the whole journey at that time, it felt really good to finally meet others like me and watching in how communicating with others in signing, facial expressions and body language.
I have to add my teacher told us in how he met his wife. She is deaf, went to a deaf school, didn't learn lip reading and learnt Auslan, met my teacher who in turn taught him everything he needed to know in signing in turn still teaching Auslan sign language.

I may not be able to learn other languages from other countries, but what I learnt in everything about myself and others like me was the best experience I will always hold close to my heart.

I've taught some deaf kis - some who lip read and had few problems but others who signed and had many problems in a hearing school. Also have taught quite a few kids with hearing aids - one little pre-primary who regualrly would lean over things like the cooking pot when were were making playdough or whatever and they'd fly off over his ears (they were very new for him at the time) and end up in the gooey mixture!! He also had an FM system where I wore a lapel mike attached to a transmitter and he wore the receiver around his neck which sent the sounds to his aids - I could call him in from the playground even! More recently I've taught kids with successful cochlear implants, and a teaching colleague with one as well, so they have effectively found a "cure" for many deaf kids these days with that technology - means they have less problems in a hearing world and certainly ip[en s up theirs. I have a friend who teaches AUSLAN at a small country school - she was a Deaf Ed visiting teacher before retiring and then picking up this part-time. Sadly many people do not realise that AUSLAN is a recognised language with it's own grammar and syntax - many only think of finger spelling, which is not what AUSLAN is, of course. NB I am a languages teacher, who has taught Italian, French and German, so have passion for people to learn another language. Good on you for pointing out that AUSLAN is a language!!

 

[Lynne]

I LOVE languages and always have, even before I really knew about them. Sometimes I would hear people in the street or on a bus, conversing in some other language and wish I could do so too. Imagine my delight we I got to high school and could learn not one, but two other languages!! I did French and German all the way through secondary school to Leaving and Matric and then at Uni, whilst doing at Teachers' College, as they were known in my day. I was planning to double major in French, so picked up Italian at UWA instead of doing something like history, archaeology or philosophy, etc, none of which really interested me. However, I completed my teaching qualification befre I got my degree in Languages and was posted to the bush, where, in the days before remote learning, I could not continue my languages studies. I taught primary French before moving to anoyer nearby town where i taught some German as relief for a while. eventually the district decide to choose Italian as their language with the start of the LOTE 2000 Plan and decided I could teach Italian. They did not realise that I had only dome one year of Italian, albeit a Uni course which went from essentially first year to Fifth year high school in the one year, and nor do they see any problem with the fact that I hadn't actually used it for the e14 years since that year of study. I swatted madly to become proficient and then did some refresher courses to get up to scratch in Italian. I was fortunate enough to win three study trios to Italy, which greatly improved my language skills, and from 1992 to 2020 taught Italian almost exclusively in four or five of the local schools - govo car thrown in as it involved close to 1000 km each week. I STILL LOVE languages and have a small smattering of Japanese and picked up some basic Cantonese at a camp in Hong Kong years ago, although I cannot get the times correct so my Chinese friends laugh!
But thanks so much for pointing out that learning a language is fabulous for brain development and has been proven to stave off dementia. Music (I taught that too) and languages open neural pathways in the brain that other things do not, which makes the brain work and keeps it exercised. Use it or lose it! Learning a language has also been proven to imprve one's understanding of one's own language - English or otherwise and, not onl;y that, but to open one's eyes to other cultures, as a language cannot be totally divorced of it;s culture. I firmly believe that everyone should learn at least one other language and from as early an age as possibile. EVERYONE CAN learn another language and, in fact, is is oretty much only us native ENglish speakers who do not have two or three or even more languages at their disposal - and I am NOT talking about academics - this is the norm for most people in the world!! (Even the considered";owly", yhe illiterate, the ubeducared and even people with some intellectual deficiency - they can communicate freely in two or maore and code swutch automatically. Children growing up bilingual do not mix their languages - the brain seems to easily work out which is which and these kids have such an advantage - and it really doesn't matter what languages.


SO, it is never too late to learn a language and you are never too old nor not smart enough!! Just give it a go!! But just a word of warning - many phone apps do not teach languages - they teach vocabulary - and that's a bit like bricks without any mortar - not terribly useful!! Find a course or a person who can talk to you!

 

[Buchanfarmer]

This is exciting. I was born here and loved to chat, never learned languages. Then landed a job in Germany so had to learn very fast to lead a team. On the way my job I needed to learn Swedish, enough to read and understand. After Germany I got a job in Mexico so had to learn very fast Mexican Spanish and teach my staff highly tech stuffs. English and Spanish so they really understood.
then I have a farm in Ghana so trying my best to learn Twi, the language of the Akan peoples.

 

[Viellarde]

This is exciting. I was born here and loved to chat, never learned languages. Then landed a job in Germany so had to learn very fast to lead a team. On the way my job I needed to learn Swedish, enough to read and understand. After Germany I got a job in Mexico so had to learn very fast Mexican Spanish and teach my staff highly tech stuffs. English and Spanish so they really understood.
then I have a farm in Ghana so trying my best to learn Twi, the language of the Akan peoples.

That's a wonderful journey.

 

[Lynne]

This is exciting. I was born here and loved to chat, never learned languages. Then landed a job in Germany so had to learn very fast to lead a team. On the way my job I needed to learn Swedish, enough to read and understand. After Germany I got a job in Mexico so had to learn very fast Mexican Spanish and teach my staff highly tech stuffs. English and Spanish so they really understood.
then I have a farm in Ghana so trying my best to learn Twi, the language of the Akan peoples.

Yes, and you would have worked out that after you have leaned on extra language, learning another and then more is always rather easier as those language learning skills are transferrable each time. Well done!! And doesn't the world open up and you also realise that English is NOT the be all and end all - and that some things are easier to express in another language, and some in English. There is NO BEST language!!!