SDLC 105 Journal # 10 Response to "Bilinguals are smarter"

[Khatira Darvesh]

To me bilingualism has always been a means of communicating with more than one culture and people. I always took it as a challenge to learn a new language and it made me proud to be able to master that language. I thought it was really interesting that the article pointed out that in a bilingual brain the languages are never turned off. They are all active at the same time and that person has to navigate which language to use in which situation. I have always had a problem with this, especially while writing; I would ‘forget’ words in the language that I was using while I knew the same word in another language. This could be problematic especially when I am tired and my brain isn’t working fast enough so that sometimes I unintentionally speak in another language to someone who doesn’t understand that language. I have always seen this as a negative aspect of being bilingual because I have to always navigate through all the languages in my head. It becomes a task of its own just to sorte out the languages and utter a coherent sentence. But that was always a small price to pay for being able to communicate to different people and form intimate relationships with people of that culture that could not have been possible if I didn’t speak that language. While I always valued and was proud of the fact that I am a bilingual/multilingual, reading this article gave me a different perspective on bilingualism. It is interesting to know that speaking in multiple languages works as an exercise for the brain and makes that person smarter.