[Co0lChlnX]

What do you think about being bilingual?
Choose one and tell your points of view. You may choose more than one.

• Growing Up Bilingual
• Learning in Two Languages
• Why I Want to be Bilingual
• My Future Bilingual Career

Tell me what do you think and what are your experiences.
I made this discussion to get more information on what are the points of view of different individuals.
Collecting information

[charonyx]

Well, Growing up bilingual. I study English and Chinese at school.
Its actually pretty convenient. Im able to communicate wif the Westerners (except for one who asked me questions in latin english on a plane)and at the same time, im able to communicate wif a large no. of Asians. Some kanji characters are also in fan ti zi or the type of chinese used by Taiwan and China, if im nt wrong. Helped me pick up kanji with slightly more ease, although im still nt that gd. Its nt a bad thing, ya know? Being able to understand what others are talking abt..

[Binny922]

Well I grew up bilingual. I speak english at school and with my brother. But with my mom and grandma I speak only vietnamese. I use to study spanish to the point where I was almost fluent.

I think being bilingual is a great thing. It just expands your horizon and it allows you to express yourself in more than one way. Plus there are some jokes that are funny in one language that doesn't quite fit in another. Like ABCD in Vietnamese isn't quite as funny in english.

I really want to be able to use my bilingual skills to use later in life. Maybe travel the world and be able to communicate with the locals because I have that skill. I just can't pinpoint what I want to do quite yet I just know that knowing multiple languages will help you regardless of what you decide to do.

[IceTea]

Knowing two or more languages is almost always a good thing, right? I can't really think of anything bad that has happened to me by knowing more than my native tongue. And the good thing about knowing another language is that you can understand more people. Besides, it's always fun when you meet new people and they think you can't understand them when you actually understand everything they say. :D

[xibo]

<-- grew up bilangual, too. __german and __spanish ( underscores because both are dialects ).
i rarely speak spanish though since i live in `germany`, but i can read stuff in spanish on the internet ( eventually i can try to write things, too, though i don t know the spelling rules that are not obvious ) and knowing spanish helped alot when learning french at school. however it, and also french, engrish or japanese do not help me when it comes to understand ba(r)varian, which is the language spoken where i live while attending classes.
i don t think i will be making great use of knowing spanish in my career ( system software engineering ) unless maybe the german government scares me off, but even then i would probably leave only to austria or france instead of spain or south america ( other then chile there isn t a spanish speaking county that is known for software industry ).

[Ultra-O]

I also grew up bilingual since my Mother is from Germany and my Father is from Croatia I naturally speak both Languages and can read a littel bit croatian(its heavy to read belive me) its just natural for me. Than I learned englisch at school and speak and read it now to. For me its just normal to speak german in Germany and croatian in Croatia. I dont know how much it will help me I just learned it in my Hollidays when I was at my Grandmas house, so that I can speak naturall there.

[bn8299]

Growing Up Bilingual

I have....chinese and english. ^^ My chinese is pretty sucky academically but i'm alright at speaking it =D Its nice knowing more languages, even dialects (i know more or less hokkien and teochew). It really increases the variety of people we speak to and everything, growing up bilingual has a huge advantage over learning a whole new language when u're older, cuz u'll tend to mix the sentence structures up etc. and u'd usually hardly speak it, so growing up learning the languages is wayyy easier than learning it after u have grown older ^^

Learning in Two Languages

don't really get what u mean by that...

Why I Want to be Bilingual - the more languages, the merrier ^^

[Macho Moron]

Growing Up Bilingual

I grew up surrounded by people of my nationality and Russians, so there's no wonder that my Russian is almost as good as my main language.

Learned English at 6... really. I still remember stealing my sister's book and tapes of learning English. I even remember one song from it xD

School... got lazy... although I got some basics of a couple more languages after a little Eurotrip with my uncle. +English as 1st language.

2nd language... German. I do understand it quite well, yet I suck at using it. Oh well, can't be learned...

Studying some more languages... so far, so good. I may not perfect them, but I'll study enough for a native speaker to call me "good".

Learning in Two Languages

Hm? If you're talking about something not related to languages (f.e. Mathematics), it's gonna be quite hard. About as hard as reading two books about the same subjects and comparing them.

Just stick to one language and you'll do your best.

Why I Want to be Bilingual

*To understand and be understood
*Books. Literature. It's much more fun to read an original rather than a translated copy.
*Possibility of earning more $$ in the future.
*It's fun. Really. Kind of nice to master many languages.

My Future Bilingual Career

If I remember well, I speak just enough languages to drive a cab in Switzerland.
To put it simply... who knows. Yet I'm pretty sure that my CV will look quite nice in any way.

[multy]

Bilingual? I prefer Multi-lingual... no pun intended...

Hmmm... I grow up within and study English-German-Indonesian-France... however only the first three stuck in my head until now maybe due to my growing lack of interest to France...

Recently I am trying my eyes, hands, tongues and ears on Japanese...

If I have to choose language for studying... I would choose English... well... much simpler... and for my career... I think languages are useful to have around on whatever you do...

[xibo]

france is a quite nice country though, and the language sounds nice, much unlike some others *looks at german*

[UltimaVoid]

Hmmm... coz I'm from Indonesia so I learn Indonesian language. In school, I also learn english and chinese language. Now, I start to learn Japanese language by myself (even not good enough) ^^

[multy]

Quote: Originally Posted by xibo

france is a quite nice country though, and the language sounds nice, much unlike some others *looks at german*

It is my tongue... somehow... never fits well with France. Anyone is willing to fix me?

[InDiGo]

Hmmm... being bilingual seems convinient... I myself am semi-bilingual... (I'm exposed to lots and lots of English, and now Japanese)
For learning in two languages... it's not that difficult actually. (if you're real good at both language)

[Beba]

i grew up in an arab country.. so i know arabic, english, and since my mother's French\she tought me some french too..
i think it's important to know more than one language..
i wanna learn japanese and chinese too..
but for the near future, german would be my choice, coz i'm studyin medecine right now, and i think i'm gonna continue my studies in germany.."if it worked out right.."