Learning another language could do more than help you on holiday — it may actually slow down the ageing process.

A study of 86,000 adults aged 51 to 90 across 27 European countries found that people who spoke three or more languages were far less likely to show signs of "accelerated ageing" than those who spoke only one.

Researchers from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language compared participants’ biological age — measured through physical, cognitive, and lifestyle factors such as heart health, activity levels, and sleep quality — to their actual age.

They found that multilingual speakers tended to have a smaller gap between the two, suggesting their bodies and brains were ageing more slowly.

Jason Rothman and Federico Gallo, from Lancaster University, wrote in an independ

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