Why do some people learn new languages better than others?

Author: Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2026, 1:11pm

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I’ve just returned from time in Europe and noted, with some sense of shame, my lack of bilingual-ness. Others seem to pick up new languages relatively easy. What’s behind this frustrating (at least for me!) phenomenon?

We already know that learning more than one language as a child puts you at an advantage for learning other languages as an adult.

Also know that there are some specific parts of the brain (e.g., the Broca’s area) that play a big role in learning languages.

However, new research shows that it might actually be different areas of the brain and different types of skills, not just language skills, that help adults pick up a new language.

Researchers followed a group of people trying to learn a new language - to avoid any effect of having picked up bits of language over time which might make learning easier, the researchers got people to learn a completely made-up language called Brocanto2.

Brocanto2 is an artificial language created by language-learning researchers to study how adults learn a new language under controlled laboratory conditions. It is not a naturally spoken language. Instead, it was designed to have enough vocabulary and grammar to resemble a real second language while remaining small enough to be learned in experiment. It refers to pieces and moves of a chess-like game to construct the language. You can only use the language to describe activities within the game so can’t literally translate it.

An example of Brocanto2 is “aaf troise ploof neim” – not sure what exactly this means but it refers to how a particular game piece would move on the board.

The researchers found that, at least in the first few months of learning this new language it wasn’t the typical parts of the brain that were lighting up, it was areas to do with attention, problem-solving, and memory. The study only lasted for a week so possible that other changes in the brain could occur later.

Possible implication is that if you want to prep your brain for new languages maybe hone your memory and problem-solving skills first and keep them sharp.

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