Can You Actually Learn a Language While Sleeping? - Busuu (2024)

Is it possible to learn a language in your sleep?

Well, no. You can’t learn a whole language in your sleep – it’s too complex. While plenty of studies have been done on sleep learning, the results have been generally inconclusive, and no one has been able to master tricky concepts like grammar rules in their sleep. But you may be able to help yourself along!

If you want to learn while you sleep, the one thing studies suggest you might be able to do is reinforce your vocabulary in a new language. You’ll still need to work on speaking out loud, reading, and more complicated linguistic concepts during your waking hours, but a leg up is a leg up!

Here’s how sleep learning works

Basically, learning a new language in your sleep is tricky because, when you sleep, it’s generally believed that you lack the conscious awareness and necessary brain chemistry to really learn. But your brain isn’t totally dormant.

Studies have found that words learned in your sleep won’t show up in general recall (you won’t, in your waking life, have the ability to distinguish words you’ve only heard while sleeping from new words), but that your brain makes memories – from the abstract of a 2016 study published in Neuroscience of Consciousness: “both behavioral and EEG data indicate the presence of an implicit memory trace for words presented during sleep.”

So, in short, you might not know that you’ve learned new words, but your brain will have already started making memories of them, which may make them easier to remember down the line.

How to try learning while sleeping

If you want to give learning a language in your sleep a shot (and hey, why not?), you should focus on beefing up your vocabulary.

While you may be able to find resources online in your language of choice, it’d be even better to record yourself (or a friend, if you hate the sound of your own voice) saying the words you want to remember and their definitions. That way, you get a tailored vocab lesson for your snoozing self!

If you learn with Busuu, you can use the Review function, which automatically gathers words you’ve stumbled on or struggled to remember in the past. It’s an easy way to quickly gather the words you most need to reinforce – whether you choose to review them awake or in your dreams is up to you.