Learning to read and write in Korean has been a huge focus of my language learning this semester. Learning a new alphabet and writing system is a big hurdle that you can avoid as a language learner when learning another Romanized language. Instead of being able to jump write into vocabulary and grammar like I was able to do with Spanish, I spent a while just memorizing the alphabet and learning how to read and write in Hangul. However, it has been a cool way to track my progress because I remember in the beginning sounding out every word and needing to look at my notes on the alphabet in order to read. Now, I'm starting to recognize common combinations of letters and being able to process what sounds like make much more quickly. I'm not sure if I would say that I'm bilingual; I'm definitely not with Korean, but my Spanish skills are much more developed. Even so, I still can't think quickly in Spanish and can definitely still improve how fluidly I speak it. However, I guess being bilingual isn't necessarily being fluent in two languages, but rather just proficient. My Korean will need a lot of work before I can say I'm trilingual.
I think the articles make some good points about the benefits of bilingualism. It's hard to quantify intelligence, but I think that knowing more than one language can broaden your scope of thinking, which in my opinion, makes you smarter. Different languages force you to think in different ways, and that can only boost your intelligence. Also, bilingualism opens you to new cultures, and having a greater global perspective and understanding contributes to intelligence I believe. Knowing more than one language also forces you to be able to switch gears quickly and be more active in your thinking in order to know which language, vocabulary, grammar rules, etc. to process and speak in a certain context.
Comments
I agree that it is hard to quantify intelligence but that knowing multiple languages can broaden your scope of thinking. I think language influences the way to perceive and make sense of the world, and so knowing more than one language can broaden you perception of things.