Learning languages early

A German-Italian study of bilingual children supports the notion that innate language acquisition ability is peculiar to early childhood:

"The younger, the better. In our investigation, functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown that our brain seems to have the need for additional resources when a language is learned late. This doesn't happen when a language is acquired since birth or at a very early stage," co-author Stefano Cappa, head of the psychology faculty at the San Raffaele Vita-Salute University in Milan, told Discovery News.

I'm not sure how decisive the results are in any practical sense, however. While the later learners did use more of their brains to work in their second language, their actual abilities in that language varied considerably. Does it really matter if you're using more (or different parts) of your brain, as long as you are thinking and speaking fluently?
Of course, you don't know until it's too late if you happen to be able to pick up languages later in life, so the advice to teach languages early still holds -- just don't give up on new languages just because you think you are too old.

Posted by David on January 10, 2003 1:33 PM