Boomer On Fire #331 - Parlez Vous...?
Boomers - Living Our Best Lives
Welcome to Boomer on Fire, the newsletter that inspires and motivates baby boomers to live their best lives.
If you’re planning to travel or relocate don’t shun the opportunity to learn a new language. It can be life-changing.
Learning a Foreign Language as an Older Adult
New Opportunities and Joy
Conventional wisdom is that it is hard to learn a foreign language as an adult. Especially as an older adult.
Evidence suggests that isn’t necessarily the case. But even if true, learning a new language would be worth the effort. And that’s for a couple of general reasons.
Objective Benefits
Learning a foreign language offers several cognitive advantages for older adults. These benefits are enhanced mental agility, improved problem-solving abilities, and help in delaying cognitive decline with age. Memory is improved. Whether or not you master a language isn’t really important. These benefits accrue with the effort.
Subjective Benefits
This is the fun part. Learning a language is a gateway to other cultures. You can travel all over the world, but if you can speak a local language, you can really appreciate the culture. You can perhaps even make new friends.
Even when you don’t travel, learning a foreign language allows you to participate in language exchange groups, classes, and community events that promote conversation and friendship. Bonds can form with fellow students, too.
Anecdote Time
I want to share a personal experience that shows, to a small extent, some of the unexpected things that can happen when you learn a new language, even at a novice level.
Some years back I had an extended period working throughout Europe. During an 18-month span in Germany, I took several weeks of lessons as well as having all that exposure to the language. Then, on a subsequent assignment, I found myself down an interesting linguistic rabbit hole.
I was sent for several months to Madrid. I had no experience speaking Spanish, so I took a short series of lessons. Of course, most beginners learn the names of common food items. As many people know, the Spanish word for cheese is “queso”. I thought that strange, because I recalled that it is “fromage” in French and “formaggi” in Italian. Why would two of the three most prominent romance languages be so similar and the third so different? I then recalled that the German word for cheese is “Käse”, pronounced “kay-zeh”. That is nearly identical to “queso”. Some investigation led me to find out that there were Germanic tribes inhabiting Spain during late Classical and early Medieval times. That led to further discovery of parts of European history that I had never encountered. All because of cheese.
Maybe you simply want to order a meal in Paris. Or maybe you want to achieve personal growth in retirement. Whatever your reason, learning a foreign language is a great endeavor, and it might take you places you never imagined.
In the last issue, there was this Peak Foliage Prediction map. You might find that the most popular places have become crowded and expensive during peak color season. That’s when you might consider some unexpected places.
A country that has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years is New Zealand. It certainly is gorgeous. Due to the impact of the increased number of travelers, New Zealand is taking a page from Venice’s playbook and hiking its Tourist Tax.
Thanks for reading. Go out and live your best life!
Kevin
That is a very interesting story about the cheese!