Learning Journal #9

[Anirudh Viswanathan]

Being bilingual makes a person smarter in the sense that they can understand new things and process them differently. It does not necessarily mean they are intellectually more gifted. It just adds to the person’s skills in being able to process things in more creative ways. Translating sentences or words from one language to another means you have to think of how one language is structured and then switch it so that it makes sense to you in both languages. People define intelligence in different ways, so I think it is unfair to say bilinguals are "smarter" than monolingual speakers, but it is fair to say they think about the world differently. I like being able to have a cultured background, unlike my friends. I like being able to understand more things about the world around us. Maybe it would make more sense to say that bilinguals have more enhanced language skills than others. This would be a fair thing to say. The second language, just exposes you to a whole new culture than you would know if you were a monolingual.