One thing I've never seen discussed on this topic (possible I just missed it, I only read popular accounts) is whether speaking multiple languages is a proxy for higher sociability / stronger social ties. That's a known dimension that improves health and aging and I wonder if just being able or interested in speaking with a broader swath of people is what helps more than the cognitive demands of switching.
Raised multilingual here (as in father spoke one, mother spoke another, living abroad and US back and forth). I don't know about the stronger social ties but I have found that thinking in a different language helps me get to sleep easier. There are times when I'm spinning around in webs in English (work, life etc) at night, and when I switch over to Spanish thoughts I fall asleep easier.
Maybe just stuff like that is enough to make a difference.
Switching into another language also helps if you are stuck in an environment where you do not want to pay attention (e.g. on a bus with blaring ads that you can't mute or with a rude neighbor yapping on their phone).
In my world, most multilingual speakers are children of immigrant families, and that transcends socio-economic boundaries. Plenty of immigrants were already wealthy before coming to the SF Bay Area, where we import highly educated, specialized workers. On the other hand, we also import physical laborers who are also generally multilingual but not in the same social class.
Some of these immigrants are very well supported with a strong social network, while others struggle with isolation.
On first reading I assumed you meant the physical laborers would have the stronger social network, and the wealthy would be more isolated (true in my experience). But you may have meant just the opposite!
In fact it's two separate questions because it can go both ways, heavily.
Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in its nascent phase, and China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programmes at its unis because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. It’s already becoming a niche hobby when many developed-country Gen Z are content with traveling and working abroad with only a knowledge of English alongside their native language.
I think any multilingual person will be skeptical of your analysis. Translation is not a substitute for understanding the original. It's good that we have translations, but it isn't the same. As you get into consuming art, literature, poetry, commentary, this is relevant.
I'll give you a very simple example I saw recently. I saw a dad joke in Spanish on social media and it gave me a chuckle. It was a comment to a lawyer's video and it translates to "can I study law if I'm a leftie?" It relies on the fact that law is also a word for "right".
AI won't be able to succinctly translate that joke and have it hit the same way. As an experiment I just fed that into ChatGPT, and it did explain the pun in 6 paragraphs with quotations and a bulleted list, but that kills the simplicity of the humor.
Learning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the original language could be important), and poetry themselves are niche hobbies.
I don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.
Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).
Someone who can speak English on top of their mother tongue is already multilingual. Anecdotally, people who live anywhere close to a border in Europe tends to speak at least two languages, often more than two, regardless of class or profession.
In Latin America, most countries speak Spanish (with the obvious exception of Brazil and smaller colonies from the other European countries), so the every day pressure to learn another language isn't there and English becomes the "obvious" choice. I don't quite get why you seem to discount English entirely.
There's always been a Lingua Franca. It hasn't always been the same one. There will likely always be one.
Art is perennial and omnipresent in human societies, but the sort of art that operates through a language foreign to the aficionado’s own, and learning that language would be beneficial to appreciation of it, is obviously going to be a niche subset of art.
If anything comedy is an excellent way of learning a language: the use of double and triple entendres helps to quickly get exposed to alternate meanings and misunderstandings of words. Comedy aimed at learners or multilinguals can also help, plenty of anglos who learned Spanish can relate to "feeling pregnant" early on :)
Culture is not only art. An LLM won't help you naturally drop you a "cuidao chacho que toy mu loco" nor "в жёлтом доме по тебе скучают", nor will it translate it into something that carries the exact meaning to you in English, nor reference any equivalent cultural element, for the foreseeable future. You'll need embeddings common life experiences, and even intonation can completely change the meaning even retaining the emphasis.
Even if the translation is perfect and "real-time", it comes with a significant latency that will make any conversation less natural. Good for some situations while traveling, not something you would want to rely on for everyday life.
> China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programs because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby.
If this happens, professional or reliable translations will only be accessible to those who can afford/pay them, leaving everyone else stuck with the errors produced by LLMs.
To use machine translation, one have to know the language to review the output; otherwise, you're doomed to mistakes. Whatever you do with LLMs, the same thing will happen.
I would name all the marketing surrounding the A"I" as the LLM's blindness virus, or something similar.
This has been said for ages and, as a person in a very multilingual environment, I still cannot see it happening, no matter how good the translations are. I may be wrong, but talking through translation earbuds seems dystopic and uncomfortable.
there's also no substitute for the reduced inferential distance when two people speak the same language. the literal meaning of words encodes just a subset of the communication
With AI there will always be people who learn more, faster using AI. And there will be people who use AI to avoid learning. When moving abroad, I hope folks will do the former (and the latter as tourists).
When I move back to Japan I'll wear something like Even Realities glasses, and when unknown vocabulary gets used, display that. Personally I think this will help me learn better than before. But let's wait and see!
I'm very hopeful about learning-acceleration tools. Just think what will be possible with Neuralink.
> Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby.
That could a long time or it could be a very different implementation than the one you describe. Half of the world knowing 2 or more languages and that has been growing over time. I don’t see the evidence that technology will soon close the gap of speaking and understanding another language when in comes to communicating with family, music, business, participating in community events, volunteering, or even intimacy.
Some peer criticism from: Vanhove, J. (2026). Does multilingualism really protect against accelerated ageing? Critical comments on Amoruso et al. (2025). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1–10.
"As the authors correctly point out in their discussion, their observational study does not allow them to establish any causal links between the degree of multilingualism in a country and the extent to which its inhabitants show signs of accelerated ageing. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have kept this insight in mind when they came up with the title (‘Multilingualism protects …’) and the abstract (‘These results underscore the protective role of multilingualism …’) that grabbed the media's attention."
"The authors use country-level data on multilingualism, namely the estimated percentage of monolinguals in the country (the Mono variable in BAG_OR_cross.csv), the estimated percentage of people in the country who know exactly one additional language (One), those who know exactly two additional languages (Two), and those who know at least three additional languages (Three), always at the time of data collection."
"According to a simple OLS regression model at the country level with the monolingualism percentage as its sole predictor, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.36 years (some 133 days; 95% CI: (58,207) days). If log-per-capita GDP is controlled for, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.29 years (some 105 days; 95% CI: (22,188) days)."
> Dr Amoruso said: “In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age. The effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain ageing. This suggests that multilingual experience matters as a gradient: it is not simply about being bilingual or not, but about the depth and duration of language experience.”
One thing I've never seen discussed on this topic (possible I just missed it, I only read popular accounts) is whether speaking multiple languages is a proxy for higher sociability / stronger social ties. That's a known dimension that improves health and aging and I wonder if just being able or interested in speaking with a broader swath of people is what helps more than the cognitive demands of switching.
Raised multilingual here (as in father spoke one, mother spoke another, living abroad and US back and forth). I don't know about the stronger social ties but I have found that thinking in a different language helps me get to sleep easier. There are times when I'm spinning around in webs in English (work, life etc) at night, and when I switch over to Spanish thoughts I fall asleep easier.
Maybe just stuff like that is enough to make a difference.
That's nice, like the brain switching to "home mode" maybe?
Learned some french recently, heavy bouts of insomnia due to moving / stress - I will try this advice exactly this night.
Switching into another language also helps if you are stuck in an environment where you do not want to pay attention (e.g. on a bus with blaring ads that you can't mute or with a rude neighbor yapping on their phone).
Learning German hasn't made me more sociable.
But there was neurogenesis.
And, just thinking about other cultures
In my world, most multilingual speakers are children of immigrant families, and that transcends socio-economic boundaries. Plenty of immigrants were already wealthy before coming to the SF Bay Area, where we import highly educated, specialized workers. On the other hand, we also import physical laborers who are also generally multilingual but not in the same social class.
Some of these immigrants are very well supported with a strong social network, while others struggle with isolation.
On first reading I assumed you meant the physical laborers would have the stronger social network, and the wealthy would be more isolated (true in my experience). But you may have meant just the opposite!
In fact it's two separate questions because it can go both ways, heavily.
Interesting food for thought, thanks for posting.
Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in its nascent phase, and China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programmes at its unis because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. It’s already becoming a niche hobby when many developed-country Gen Z are content with traveling and working abroad with only a knowledge of English alongside their native language.
I think any multilingual person will be skeptical of your analysis. Translation is not a substitute for understanding the original. It's good that we have translations, but it isn't the same. As you get into consuming art, literature, poetry, commentary, this is relevant.
The AI will be able to do all that for you. What you're touching on is the difference between comprehension vs merely being a vessel for information.
I'll give you a very simple example I saw recently. I saw a dad joke in Spanish on social media and it gave me a chuckle. It was a comment to a lawyer's video and it translates to "can I study law if I'm a leftie?" It relies on the fact that law is also a word for "right".
AI won't be able to succinctly translate that joke and have it hit the same way. As an experiment I just fed that into ChatGPT, and it did explain the pun in 6 paragraphs with quotations and a bulleted list, but that kills the simplicity of the humor.
It can't now. It will be able to in the future, when the translation actually becomes fluent for the user.
Learning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the original language could be important), and poetry themselves are niche hobbies.
I don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.
Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).
Someone who can speak English on top of their mother tongue is already multilingual. Anecdotally, people who live anywhere close to a border in Europe tends to speak at least two languages, often more than two, regardless of class or profession.
In Latin America, most countries speak Spanish (with the obvious exception of Brazil and smaller colonies from the other European countries), so the every day pressure to learn another language isn't there and English becomes the "obvious" choice. I don't quite get why you seem to discount English entirely.
There's always been a Lingua Franca. It hasn't always been the same one. There will likely always be one.
they think art is a niche hobby and not the basis of human culture. I wouldn't listen too intently to them.
Art is perennial and omnipresent in human societies, but the sort of art that operates through a language foreign to the aficionado’s own, and learning that language would be beneficial to appreciation of it, is obviously going to be a niche subset of art.
basic puns and rhyming are niche forms of art?
If anything comedy is an excellent way of learning a language: the use of double and triple entendres helps to quickly get exposed to alternate meanings and misunderstandings of words. Comedy aimed at learners or multilinguals can also help, plenty of anglos who learned Spanish can relate to "feeling pregnant" early on :)
Culture is not only art. An LLM won't help you naturally drop you a "cuidao chacho que toy mu loco" nor "в жёлтом доме по тебе скучают", nor will it translate it into something that carries the exact meaning to you in English, nor reference any equivalent cultural element, for the foreseeable future. You'll need embeddings common life experiences, and even intonation can completely change the meaning even retaining the emphasis.
It will help you communicate, but not partake.
Let me tell you about a little thing called kpop. Korean language courses are booming.
Even if the translation is perfect and "real-time", it comes with a significant latency that will make any conversation less natural. Good for some situations while traveling, not something you would want to rely on for everyday life.
> China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programs because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby.
If this happens, professional or reliable translations will only be accessible to those who can afford/pay them, leaving everyone else stuck with the errors produced by LLMs.
To use machine translation, one have to know the language to review the output; otherwise, you're doomed to mistakes. Whatever you do with LLMs, the same thing will happen.
I would name all the marketing surrounding the A"I" as the LLM's blindness virus, or something similar.
Nah it'll be the same progression as llms.
people learn by trial and error. ai output can be 50% accurate. it is still useful
This has been said for ages and, as a person in a very multilingual environment, I still cannot see it happening, no matter how good the translations are. I may be wrong, but talking through translation earbuds seems dystopic and uncomfortable.
there's also no substitute for the reduced inferential distance when two people speak the same language. the literal meaning of words encodes just a subset of the communication
but for people in unilingual environments, this tech seems like a miracle
With AI there will always be people who learn more, faster using AI. And there will be people who use AI to avoid learning. When moving abroad, I hope folks will do the former (and the latter as tourists).
When I move back to Japan I'll wear something like Even Realities glasses, and when unknown vocabulary gets used, display that. Personally I think this will help me learn better than before. But let's wait and see!
I'm very hopeful about learning-acceleration tools. Just think what will be possible with Neuralink.
China does this, because significant amount of foreign companies have left or plan to leave China.
> Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby.
That could a long time or it could be a very different implementation than the one you describe. Half of the world knowing 2 or more languages and that has been growing over time. I don’t see the evidence that technology will soon close the gap of speaking and understanding another language when in comes to communicating with family, music, business, participating in community events, volunteering, or even intimacy.
Some peer criticism from: Vanhove, J. (2026). Does multilingualism really protect against accelerated ageing? Critical comments on Amoruso et al. (2025). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1–10.
"As the authors correctly point out in their discussion, their observational study does not allow them to establish any causal links between the degree of multilingualism in a country and the extent to which its inhabitants show signs of accelerated ageing. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have kept this insight in mind when they came up with the title (‘Multilingualism protects …’) and the abstract (‘These results underscore the protective role of multilingualism …’) that grabbed the media's attention."
"The authors use country-level data on multilingualism, namely the estimated percentage of monolinguals in the country (the Mono variable in BAG_OR_cross.csv), the estimated percentage of people in the country who know exactly one additional language (One), those who know exactly two additional languages (Two), and those who know at least three additional languages (Three), always at the time of data collection."
"According to a simple OLS regression model at the country level with the monolingualism percentage as its sole predictor, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.36 years (some 133 days; 95% CI: (58,207) days). If log-per-capita GDP is controlled for, a 10-percentage-point difference in monolingualism is associated with a difference in the average GAP value of about 0.29 years (some 105 days; 95% CI: (22,188) days)."
> Dr Amoruso said: “In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age. The effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain ageing. This suggests that multilingual experience matters as a gradient: it is not simply about being bilingual or not, but about the depth and duration of language experience.”
https://www.fens.org/news-activities/news/speaking-another-l...