Brain can quickly learn a forgotten language again

Our subjective impression is often that the neglected language completely fades away from our memory. But does “use it or lose it” apply to foreign languages?

Although it may seem we have absolutely no memory of the neglected language, new research suggests this “forgotten” language may be more deeply engraved in our minds than we realise.
Psychologists Jeffrey Bowers, Sven L. Mattys and Suzanne Gage from the University of Bristol recruited volunteers who were native English speakers but who had learned either Hindi or Zulu as children when living abroad.

The researchers focused on Hindi and Zulu because these languages contain certain phonemes that are difficult for native English speakers to recognise. A phoneme is the smallest sound in a language-a group of phonemes forms a word.

Scientists asked volunteers to complete a background vocabulary test to see if they remembered any words from the neglected language. They then trained the participants to distinguish between pairs of phonemes that started Hindi or Zulu words.

As it turned out, even though the volunteers showed no memory of the second language in the vocabulary test, they were able to quickly relearn and correctly identify phonemes that were spoken in the neglected language.

These findings suggest that exposing young children to foreign languages even if they do not continue to speak them can have a lasting impact on speech perception, says a Bristol release.
The study authors conclude: “Even if the language is forgotten (or feels this way) after many years of disuse, leftover traces of the early exposure can manifest themselves as an improved ability to relearn the language.”
These findings were published in Psychological Science.