Advantages of growing up bilingual

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Hello my Friends,

this time I want to tell you about my experience growing up as a bilingual child as I often get asked how it was. There's also quite a bit of prejudice and I just want to tell you my point of view. It's not scientifically proven but chances are that other bilingual people had similar experiences.

So I was raised talking German and Czech. Two completely different languages. I was born in Germany but as children we spent at least all of summer in the Czech Republic. My Czech grandma really wanted us to learn Czech in the best way possible so even though we went to kindergarten in Germany, we have learnt both languages at the same pace. Our mother mainly talked Czech to us and even when we answered in German she'd talk Czech back to us.

My sister and I talk both languages (somewhat) fluently and without accents. Many people assume that bilingual children always have a phase of language mixing. We never had that. Yes sometimes we answered back in the other language but we never unintentionally mixed the languages within a sentence.

I love my families on both sides. You can talk to them about every damn topic but sometimes I just felt like I was the German kid when I was in the Czech Republic and like I was the Czech kid when I was in Germany. Sometimes it made me feel sad but most of the times it made me feel really cool because there was two countries with lovable people. I'm glad about being bilingual. It made things easier for me and it really opens up a lot more opportunities.

So these are the advantages that were in it for me:
  1. I learned other languages way easier than other kids. People always had problems with the TH in English or the rolling R in Spanish. That was a piece of cake for me. I think I had a better feeling for sounds so I could distinguish them better. Not only when it came to sounds it was easier but also vocabulary. Yes, I still had to study a lot but understanding and reading a language was much easier for me than for other kids. I still had problems finding the words that I need to say what I want to say but as I said, understanding seems to be easier for me. 
  2. It doesn't matter if it was English, French or Spanish but I really was able to transfer a language I already knew to the other. English was similar to German and French also had a few aspects of English and the conjugated verbs were a Czech thing. Spanish was even easier because I could transfer French, German, English AND Czech on it.
  3. I could basically get a job at any given time if I wanted to. I could teach Czech children German or the other way around and even looking into my future, I can go to a university in Germany or the Czech Republic simply because I know both languages fluently and I have relatives there where I could live for a while if I wanted to.
  4. I learned to make friends on a different level. I learned that knowing more languages is a good thing and you can totally use it to bond with other people. There was a girl in my class and sometimes she'd say a Croatian word and I was surprised to find out that Czech and Croatian were really similar and we clicked instantly.
  5. There's simply more people to love when you know more languages. You can connect with way more people and it is nice to know that if you wanted to, you could access a whole other world of experiences simply by talking to people from different countries.
  6. It makes you more open towards other people. You know that you are different and you know that some people don't accept you the way you are but that only makes you more open towards other people. It does not matter what religion, race, sexuality or gender they have, if they have disabilities or not. You are more open towards other people. (BLACK LIVES MATTER!) Bilingual people are usually raised "interculturally". I always thought that you should accept people for who they are, no matter where they come from or what the color of their skin is. If they're nice to you, you should be nice to them. 
Now if you have any more questions about how I grew up and what I stand for, make sure to follow me on my social media accounts, most of all my Instagram as I'm most active on there:

REMEMBER TO FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE AND STAY STRONG DURING THESE TIMES! I'M READY TO LEARN MORE! I'M WITH YOU! 


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