105 Journal Entry #9

[Jimin Yoo]

The article reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of being a bilingual speaker and how bilingual speakers could potential be smarter. Different languages have different ways of perceiving the world; therefore, being a bilingual speakers helps people to perceive world around us in more diverse ways than a monolingual speakers. As bilingual speakers have broader spectrum of word choices, bilingual speakers are more creative in a way and possibly even smarter. However, there are some disadvantages of being a bilingual speaker. Having a knowledge of many different languages could intervene the flow of thoughts. For example, one could forget what the word was in another language. This happens to me a lot when I start to think in English and try to say a particular word in Korean. It also happens in vise versa, then I end up speaking with a mixture of two languages in one sentence since I could not finish my thoughts with only one language. Although there are disadvantages of being a bilingual speaker, I believe knowing more languages helps one to gain a wider view.