Why be bilingual? (Part 1)

Before I start my long rant and push for bilingualism... let me explain some things...

      I know this isn't the most academic argument, because honestly, it's a very dense subject and most people don't want to hear about it.  Second of all, I know this might be slightly offensive to people who don't know more than one language or may not have time, but want to, but I really don't mean for it to be.  I want it to be informative, logical and hopefully interesting.  I'm a huge nerd and love language learning.

America is fighting so hard to not be bilingual.  I know a lot of it has to do with Americans fighting against immigration.

Why do they fight immigration?  I think a lot of the reason is people are scared.  They are scared because people speaking another language and living different culturally makes them uncomfortable

I agree with that feeling.  I too feel unease when someone is speaking a different language that I don't know.  I also feel uncomfortable with the way some people of other cultures live.

However, we live in a very connected world.  One of the best ways to fight that fear and uncomfortableness is to learn another language and another culture (learning the two goes hand in hand).

Just think about it, because I know Spanish, I can converse with millions more people in the world than someone who just knows English.  My world has become so much bigger from this.

There are about 6,500 languages in the world.  About 2,000 have fewer than 1,000 speakers.  That still leaves 4,500 widely spoken languages.

Here is a list of the most widely spoken languages:

       1. Mandarin Chinese 845 Million

       2. Spanish 329 Million

       3. English 328 Million

       4. Hindi 240 Million

       5. Arabic 232 Million

Those are just the native speakers, the graph on that website also lists the second language speakers

"But doesn't everyone speak English?"  No.

The brain naturally learns language.  When you're very young, your brain soaks up your first language and learns all the grammar rules, social cues and idioms.  Your brain is fully capable of learning other languages.  However, as you get older, your brain slowly loses that ability.  Learning a second or third language earlier in life makes it easier to keep that function strong.

Learning a second language when you're young also improves cognitive ability immensely.  Studies have been done and kids that know more than one language simply test better than kids who know one.

One thing I find interesting is that Americans think they're smarter in general than people from other countries.  Well check this out...

      Germany- German, Russian, Turkish, Kurdish, Polish and many other languages are spoken there... most Germans claim to know German and a foreign langauge and 27 percent know at least 2 languages.

      Spain- Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Asturian, Aragonese and many more

      China- Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and several more

To keep up, we must be multilingual.  Those three countries I listed are important in the world and soooo many languages are spoken widely there.  The people in those countries have kept up and opened up to the other languages and cultures.  Many people in Europe are at least bilingual.  We have it easy here.  Yeah we have a lot of other people speaking other languages, but for the most part it's just English and Spanish.  I think if it at some point you took the time to learn another language, any other language (I'm pushing for Spanish :P), I think you will understand the world better and you might actually enjoy the process!

I'll explain more about what else bilingualism opens up and what it has done in my life in my next post.