One day during my recent trip to my native Bulgaria, my husband and I went to a boutique wine tasting place in Nesebar, one of the old towns. The young man who served us there spoke very good Polish, which is my husband’s native language. Then he turned to the Russian tourists and spoke Russian to them. We asked him if he spoke the languages of all the tourists who come there. “Of course not,” he said, “I only speak Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, English, and German.” I was laughing because he really used the word “only.”
In the last several decades more people have started to travel and have chosen to work and live abroad. This means that nowadays there are more bilingual and multilingual speakers. But what does it mean to be bilingual?
What does it mean to be bilingual?
How do we define bilingualism? Researchers have been brainstorming on this topic for quite a long time. Some of them argue that only individuals who are almost as close to two monolinguals can be considered truly bilingual. According to this definition, bilingualism means not making any mistakes and not having a foreign accent in either one of the two languages one speaks. Bilingualism defined this way is hardly achievable for most people.
More recently, however, researchers who study multilinguals and bilinguals around the world have come up with a broader definition. They argue that bilinguals are people who can function in more than one language. According to them, bilingualism is simply the regular use of two languages. This doesn’t mean that these languages have to be spoken perfectly or with no accent. It means that the person uses them in his/her/their everyday life. François Grosjean, a world-renowned psycholinguist and specialist on bilingualism, who agrees with this definition, believes that a bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person; a bilingual is a human communicator who manages life with two or more languages.
The benefits of being bilingual or multilingual
Knowing another language gives you an opportunity to communicate with people who speak this particular tongue and to learn about another culture. Oftentimes we take our own culture for granted and think that our way is the right (and only) way to go by in life. But when we move to a foreign place, we see that there are people who live and perceive things differently. At first we might be shocked and even irritated. Later on, however, this new experience makes us culturally and emotionally richer. As the writer Ann Campanella puts it:
One of the benefits of being bicultural is simply the awareness that how you live is not the only way.
Inspiring quotes about being bilingual and bicultural
Here are some other quotes about being bilingual and bicultural:
Learning another language is like becoming another person.
— Haruki Murakami
To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.
— Chinese Proverb
A different language is a different vision of life.
— Federico Fellini
You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.
— Geoffrey Willans
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.
— Nelson Mandela
Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.
— Amy Chua
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
— Edmund Burke
The best thing to spend on your children is your time.
— Louise Hart
Language acquisition proceeds best when the input is not just comprehensible, but really interesting, even compelling; so interesting that you forget you are listening to or reading another language.
— Stephen Krashen
What we learn with pleasure we never forget.
— Alfredy Mercier
Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.
— Mark Amidon
How I became bilingual and bicultural
When I was 22 years old, I decided to visit Poland. At the time, I didn’t know that I’d end up living there for a little over two years. In addition, didn’t speak English or any language other than my native Bulgarian. So, if I wanted to communicate, I had to try to learn some Polish. It wasn’t easy at first, but I quickly realized that I was actually learning quite fast when I didn’t focus on my mistakes or what others thought of me. I just wanted to communicate with locals and make new friends. And little by little I started speaking Polish. Of course I wasn’t perfect; I was making tons of grammar mistakes, I was choosing the wrong words, which sometimes made people laugh. But I was speaking a foreign language and I was damn proud of myself.
Sure, there were some things that I had to get used to. For example, I remember when once I wanted to buy some groceries on a Sunday and was irritated when I realized that the store was closed. I was surprised because, at the time, back in Bulgaria everything was always open. How dare they not work on Sunday, I thought. Why were the Polish so lazy?! 😂 Then, on second thought, I admitted to myself that the Bulgarians were the weird ones. Everyone back then was afraid of losing their job, so people worked crazy hours just to put food on the table.
When I moved to the US, I experienced yet another cultural shock. Everything was different. For example, I remember when people asked me how my day was going every time I entered a store. This was strange to me because in my native country you don’t ask strangers how they are doing. Then I realized that this was just a way to say “hello” in the US. Now, remembering my beginning in America, I often laugh.
Language and culture go together. If you want to be fluent, you can’t separate the tongue from its nation. Learning grammar and vocabulary won’t make you fluent until you understand the soul of the people who speak the language.
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Are you bilingual or multilingual? How long did it take you to reach this level of fluency?
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