105,110: Journal 10- Response to Reading “Why Bilinguals Are Smarter”

[Gargi Vyas]

Being bilingual myself (in Hindi and English), it was interesting to read this article. I had always felt like being bilingual provided me with more opportunities and experiences but had never thought that bilingual people can actually have better brain development. But the reasons given in the article to support their statement did make sense. For example, when I hang up after talking to my parents on the phone in Hindi, I have to suddenly switch back to English. It was harder in the beginning, but now with practice it comes naturally. English and Hindi are very different from each other, whether in terms of grammar rules or speaking styles. Therefore, I agree with their argument that bilingualism exercises the brain and its cognitive functions. Korean will be the third language I am learning, and even though I am far from having a trilingual status, I can understand the article's points about the improvement of the brain's executive function and the heightened observation of environment. Since Azmain is older than me, I have been calling her Unnie (Korean term for a female to address an older female) for quite a while now. It is getting more and more difficult day by day to not call her that while sitting with our non-Korean speaking friends. Also, it is difficult to get my brain to stop thinking in English while studying Korean. In the beginning I would write down romanized versions of Korean in order to better my pronunciation and remember sentences and words, but now I have started to use only Hangul to prevent the mix up of the two languages. Also, especially during my vocabulary development period, I am extra aware of my surroundings in case I find something I can say in Korean, and practicing that in real life helps in retention of knowledge.