Learning a language in later life: are you ever too old?

Ronald Williams, 85, started learning Welsh, his native language, at the age of 70. He grew up in south Wales, where he was raised and educated in English, and since the age of 23 has lived and worked in Solihull, near Birmingham. After retiring he decided that he wanted to reconnect with his roots: “I’m a Welshman and everybody should be able to speak their national language.”

With more time on his hands, he started looking on the internet for ways to learn Welsh, but the exercises he found didn’t help him with pronunciation. Two years ago, he started learning with Say Something in Welsh, which offers a series of podcasts and runs twice-monthly classes with a teacher, where he meets and practises with other language learners.

Williams is one of a cohort of older adults learning languages in later life. While the general consensus is that the younger learner has stronger powers of mimicry and retention, there is no evidence to suggest that adult learners are slower in terms of absorbing new information, according to Anil Biltoo, head of languages at SOAS, University of London. Instead, he says the key element to being a successful language learner is motivation.

“I was excited at the prospect of learning a language,” says Williams. “I regret not doing it in my younger days. When you’re bringing up a family and working you’re committed to those things. Learning a language and meeting people is exciting. It’s nice to go out and I look forward to [it].”

Learning a language could potentially help to ease the growing concern around isolation and loneliness among older people in the UK: “It’s so good to have an interest,” says Williams. “Loneliness is a terrible thing. I would hate to have to sit in a chair and rely on somebody knocking on the door to open my mouth.”

“Going to a class is socialising ... if you get out and you’re with other people that’s a benefit for sure,” she says. “Languages give you a little bit of a wider perspective on the world. Whether it was your interest to begin with or not, you do learn something of the culture of the country.”This is something that Yan Christensen can relate to. Christensen, a Danish 77-year-old retiree who has lived in the UK since she was 18, has been learning Russian for 10 years. She says she started because she “needed something to keep the grey cells going”. She is also interested in Russian literature and likes the sound of the language, and that it has a fairly complicated grammar. As a member of the University of the Third Age, which facilitates study groups for retired and semi-retired people, she runs two language groups.

It was this wish to learn more about other cultures that motivated Barbara Glasson to learn Urdu at 57. It is the first language she has learnt since studying a smattering of French at school.

As a methodist minister leading an interfaith project in Bradford, where a large chunk of the population is of Pakistani heritage, she decided to learn Urdu two years ago to engage with her community and help her on visits to Pakistan. She takes group classes at Bradford College once a week.

“Language is always the link between human beings and so often our point of connection,” she says. “It’s easy for English people to be idle because everybody speaks English. I was determined to have a go at communicating differently.”

“Just having the basics has been really helpful and the same applies in Pakistan. If I can just show willing, it shows that I’m not the white British person expecting everyone to be fluent in English,” she adds.

That’s not to say learning a language later in life is without its challenges. Having already learnt English and German, Christen said she finds learning a language harder now because it takes more repetition before the words stick. Williams also says he finds it more difficult remembering new Welsh vocabulary than he would have 10 or 15 years ago.

Although learning a new language may not always be easy for older adults, research suggests it can help slow down age-related cognitive decline. One study, which examined the medical records of 648 Alzheimer’s patients in the Indian city of Hyderabad found that bilinguals developed dementia four to five years later than monolinguals. This point has not escaped Williams, who believes if you don’t use it you lose it.

Biltoo says those coming to a language later in life have had exposure to foreign languages from travel to other countries. “What you also find is that they devote more time to their studies and they don’t have the pressures the undergraduate faces in terms of time management,” he adds.

“It’s worth having a go. That’s what it’s taught me,” says Glasson. “I’ll never be proficient or fluent or able to have a philosophical conversation in Urdu with anybody, but I can make a human link and that’s worth it just because it’s a step towards people.”