How to learn a new language while you sleep

Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think

While it was believed you cannot learn new information while asleep, a new study in Switzerland makes the case for sleep encoding.
41 native German speakers were introduced to a nonsense word alongside a German word to forge a relationship.
When tested while awake, the real word was defined by the nonsense word 10 percent higher than random chance, suggesting a bond was formed while asleep.
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On a recent trip to Berlin, I mostly conversed with my taxi driver through Google Translate. His English was much better than my Turkish, but as we began discussing two of the finer things in life—music and cuisine—he wanted to discuss his favorite ney players and direct me to the best kabobs in town. I was grateful, if not a little frightened as he tried to manage the phone while veering around the tight corners of the city.

Turkish was never at the top of my list of languages to learn, though after watching “Ida” a few weeks ago, my wife and I discussed Polish as an option. She speaks numerous languages while I can barely get by in Mexico on my lackluster Spanish. I spent three years in high school studying it, along with dedicating time to Hungarian tapes, but nothing has stuck.

What if I was missing an essential training method, such as… sleeping?

That’s what a new study, published in Current Biology, claims. It’s not as if playing those tapes will automatically grant you linguistic superpowers. That said, the research is another indicator that we don’t necessarily know where the boundaries of consciousness begin and end.

That’s because we often treat consciousness like a light: It’s on when awake and off when asleep. Untrue. There are many autonomic processes that easily cross that divide—they have to, or else we wouldn’t be alive—that inform conscious decision-making. Unconscious activities inform us all the time.