Learning Journal #9 (SDLC 105)

"The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life)."

I am impressed with this article but not at all surprised. I think it is a special talent to be able to communicate with people and those who master languages without a doubt use a different part of the brain to recall and respond immediately and innately if they are truly bilingual.

I am interested in how they define bilingualism though, because there are so many ways that you can measure someone's language abilities, but I think that immersion or households that speak two languages are the only ways to truly be able to consider oneself bilingual because there is a tick in your brain that people who are bilingual just don't have. When you are learning a language, usually you start off learning through translation. Eventually, you begin to learn in the target language, but there is still an element of translation so that the learner has something to relate it to. Learning from 0 and having tow different definitions of a concept in different languages is a unique ability that not many can grasp. That is how I define bilingualism.

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