I do believe that whatever we learn – including keeping up with all the new resources in genealogy – keeps our brains active. “Learning mode” keeps our brains from rusting. When we find something we love to do – like genealogy and family history research – we are more likely to pick up the skills we need to do just that.

I’ve known 10-year-olds in other countries who picked up fluent Spanish and English from the television shows they loved. Their parents didn’t even know the kids knew those languages until in social situations where they had to use those languages on their own. The brain is a rather amazing thing.

You are definitely right, it is much easier to learn other languages as a child. Our cousins in Switzerland are all fluent in French, Italian, German and English, learned at early ages in school. When my daughter (armed only with native English, school Spanish and understanding Farsi) went there, she felt like a fish out of water and finally understood why it is great to be fluent in more than one language.

I had studied Spanish in school for many years, but didn’t have an opportunity to speak it. Therefore, although I read it nearly fluently, speaking is something else. My tongue doesn’t seem to be connected to my brain!!! I wish my spoken abilities in other languages were better. Immersion helps in these cases, and I’d like to go off and live in Spain for a year to fix this problem, short visits aren’t enough time.

In my early 20s, I learned Farsi fluently in only a few months when we lived in Teheran. I was rather amazed myself to do that, I have kept it up since then, and consider it my second language. Decades later, I was forced to learn to read Cyrillic to access Belarus and other FSU records. I read Hebrew and Yiddish, but speaking them is a different matter!

Immersion, in my experience, is the best method for learning a language fluently, as I did in Iran. A simple matter of sink or swim.

Schelly.

I wished I’d learned more languages when I was younger. I’ve always been good at languages but I’m sure it would have been easier then. My parents only spoke English. I’m glad I learned to read Hebrew young, but I never really learned how to speak it. Growing up in Miami, I was encouraged to learn Spanish, but the classes were too slow for me and I never stuck them out.

I think some of my cousins born in the US know Russian and Yiddish, at least partially, considering what I’ve seen some of them share on Facebook. They’re closer to the immigrants in the family, so I guess some of it has been passed on.