With recent statistics suggesting that approximately 56% of the world’s population speaks two or three languages in an exceptionally fluent manner, it is no wonder that linguists, psychologists and sociologists across the world have been investigating the dynamics, advantages and disadvantages of bilinguism. Being bilingual means studying, speaking and understanding two different languages. One can either master a second language later in life or be lucky enough to be born in a bilingual family, where they can easily practice both languages without having to decipher their respective rules. Growing up, I never considered how useful and convenient it would be to be able to speak two or more languages fluently as I was always surrounded by people who spoke the same language as me. It wasn’t until I started traveling around the world and meeting people from different cultural backgrounds that I realized that I needed to improve my English, which over the past few decades has become a global lingua franca. As far as I am concerned, learning a second language has made me much more responsive and sensitive to other cultures, thus giving me a new perspective. When I switch from one language to another, I feel like a completely different person: my mentality, my emotions, my facial expressions, my physiological responses to what my interlocutor says, my gestures and even my tone of voice change.
Interestingly, research has revealed that many bilingual and multilingual speakers tend to emphasize different character traits depending on the language that they are speaking. Noteworthy is a study by Professor Koven, who analyzed the way in which several French-Portuguese bilinguals’ expressed their ideas and acted while speaking different languages, hoping to identify relevant patterns. His findings clearly indicate that bilingual people tend to develop two separate “selves”, one for each language. Since each language is characterized by a distinctive way of communicating (both verbally and non-verbally), bilinguals can experience different feelings and embrace different identities when speaking different languages; for example, one of the bilinguals observed by Professor Koven sounded and acted like an aggressive, hip suburbanite in French and a calm, polite but frustrated bank customer in Portuguese. More recently, researchers found out that bilingual people may even experience changes in self-perception, with some Spanish-English bilingual women reporting feeling more assertive when they speak Spanish and even interpreting the same advertisements in different ways when they see them in English and Spanish. Languages are fascinating because each one of them has a soul, a past and a personality that make it unique.
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When we master a second language, we automatically feel closer to the values and ideas that it embodies, which is why bilingual people see the world differently from other people. The English language, for example, is dynamic, quick, practical and rather informal. Asian languages, on the other hand, tend to be very formal, highly structured and polite, as they reflect the hierarchical societies in which they have evolved. Having experienced all this, I believe that my daily life wouldn’t be as interesting as it is if I didn’t know a second language. Being able to express myself in many different ways is a gift that has significantly enriched my personality and enhanced my communication skills, thus enabling me to seize my opportunities which have contributed greatly to shaping my character. Monolinguals are limited to just one language when watching films, listening to music, interacting with others and performing many other activities. Bilingual and multilingual speakers, on the other hand, can enjoy and appreciate foreign books, music and films, whose essence tends to get “lost in translation”, no matter how talented or experienced the translator is. Comedy films are an excellent example of this. Anyone who has ever seen a comedy film in both its original and dubbed versions knows exactly how difficult it can be to translate and localize humor.
Interestingly, not so long ago, many people across the world believed that raising children to be bilingual was harmful. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, parents were led to believe that bilinguism was likely to result in confusion, communication-related problems, lower intelligence and self-esteem, awkward behavior, various personality disorders and even schizophrenia. It wasn’t until the 1960s that experts began realizing that bilingual and multilingual children performed better than their monolingual counterparts in both vernal and non-verbal intelligence tests. Nowadays, bilingualism is widely viewed as an asset. People who speak more than one language are considered to be more flexible, open-minded, employable and intelligent. While I am certain that one doesn’t need to master a second language to acquire these qualities, I firmly believe that monolingual speakers will always have a narrow perception of the world compared to bilinguals, which is why I will keep working hard to improve my English until I achieve complete fluency. In today’s increasingly interconnected and multicultural world, bilinguism is what allows individuals to feel part of something great and appreciate the impact that one’s culture has on the way in which they express themselves. Bilinguism helps people see things, seize opportunities (especially social and cultural ones), overcome barriers, express themselves and achieve goals like no other skill can, thus changing them in a permanent way. With every language we learn, our personality evolves, our horizons broaden and our perception of ourselves and the people around us gradually changes, thus making it impossible for us to imagine expressing ourselves in just one language. That is why a person who only speaks one language is like a body without hands: always restrained, limited and somewhat incomplete, unable to fulfill his or her full potential, without really being aware of the many experiences and opportunities that he or she is missing out on.
- Michèle E. J. Koven. “Two Languages in the Self/ The Self in Two Languages: French-Portuguese Bilinguals’ Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse.” Ethos, vol. 26, no. 4, 1998, pp. 410–455. www.jstor.org/stable/640663.
