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Apr 19, 2022, 17:24 IST

The Benefits of Being Bilingual

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Being bilingual is a great skill to have in the present day. New research has shown that knowing more than one language actually expands your brain size, vocabulary and has many more benefits. In addition, you have the priceless benefit of being able to interact with more cultures, races and ethnicities quite effortlessly.

Most of us in India have grown up knowing at least two languages minimum. As one language comes from our mother tongue and the other language generally being English or any other secondary language. English for the reason that it’s the global language that we learn from primary school and are usually encouraged to master to fast track our career and avail more opportunities at the workplace or even work abroad, for those inclined to do so.

On a light note, bilingual folk sometimes switch between and complete a sentence in two languages, mixing both of them, which can be quite confusing at times.

Bilinguals can watch so many more movies without subtitles too! Knowing two or more languages can actually mean that your brain will work and look differently than those of your monolingual friends.

How To Measure Your Language Ability?

There are actually two facets to language proficiency. One involves the active side which is speaking and writing and the other being the passive side, which is listening and reading. When we combine these two, we really become fluent at the language we are communicating in.

For example, even amongst bilingual people, there are three different types of them, namely:

Compound bilingual

Coordinate bilingual

Subordinate bilingual

The first type is equally good at both the different languages and can process information and words in both languages simultaneously.

The second type (coordinate bilingual) have started learning the second language a bit later in life, so while they are more comfortable with their first language, in certain social situations they are able to use the second language, albeit not as fluently as the first one.

The third type are those who are barely able to express themselves in a second language but are compelled to use the second language because of usually being in a foreign location. For example, if you tell them something in the first language, let’s say English for practical purposes, they will translate the English word into their mother tongue before giving you an answer in English or their own language. This is usually slow as it takes some time to go through the back and forth translation cycles.

Some of the most intelligent people you may have known are good at translating and may have learned to speak in multiple languages! Just look them up and watch this video for more info.



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