In your native language, your brain recognizes - and endows with meaning - any conceivable subset of 50,000+ words within fractions of a second. That is in stark contrast to what you will experience with subsequent languages. Here, nothing ever happens in milliseconds, and adding a single word to your brain can be an enterprise. Imagine that, during your first trip to Paris, a friendly local takes you on a one-hour stroll from Notre Dame to the Louvre, then northwards up to the Sacr�-Coeur hill, and, finally, down to Pigalle. If I put you back at Notre Dame a few months later, you would probably find your way to Pigalle alone, recalling places, streets, crossroads, shops, and buildings. It is hard to believe that this wealth of information is approximately equivalent to learning 10 miserable words. Why does it take adults so long to learn languages while young children seem to do so whilst playing, laughing and having a great time? Do we all, shortly after infancy, suffer a subtle form of partial Alzheimer's disease? Or are adult brains tuned to find their way in urban jungles rather than in word jungles?

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"After reading The Word Brain, you may decide that you have no time to learn a new language - but never again will you say that you have no talent for it."