Kie Ino Ino1

ENG 028

Professor Batty

29 April 2018

Is Being Bilingual Really Important

Recently, the world is being more globalized and we see foreign people way often than

before. Because of this, being able to speak other languages other than your own is

recommended or required everywhere, especially at school and work. While I’m on the subject,

I’m going to talk about why we should or should not become a bilingual. How does being

bilingual affect one’s sense of identity? My belief is that studying at least one language is

important and it would have a huge positive effect in a variety of areas and help the person have

more confident.

First of all, those bilingual people would find themselves more useful. If the person can

speak English/Chinese for example, he/she can talk with anyone from all over the world. James

Lane, author of Babbel Magazine, wrote “If you’re reading this article, you may be one of the

360 million-odd native English speakers, or one of the half a billion people who speak it as a

second language.” According to him, English is the most spoken language in the world as lingua

franca, which means that the most common language for people’s second language in English. I

was already taking English class when I was in kindergarten and elementary school even had a

course which students and teachers only speak English through the 6 years. I can see how

importantly educations are seeing language classes. Needless to say,the ability will let bilinguals
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have greatest differences compared to monolinguals and this will be useful to look for a job,

opportunities, and more. Also, in a city, the person can help travelers to have a better visit by

explaining things in their language and help them understand. I’ve seen friends saying that they

had no idea what to do because no one spoke English in Japan. There is going to be an Olympic

game in Tokyo in 2020 and people are already gathering those bilinguals to prepare for tor tons

of foreign visitors.

Of course, not every single person is thinking that it is important to become a bilingual.

Kristina R Olson Ph.D., an author of “When Does Being Bilingual Help or Hurt?”, said, “While

the size of an individual’s vocabulary or lexicon varied widely, on average monolinguals had

more vocabulary in their one language than bilinguals had in either of their languages alone.”

This might be actually true because bilinguals spend times to learn another language while

monolinguals work on their own language. Furthermore, if a bilingual is studying abroad, he/she

would have to study in another language even the person is not actually understanding and

learning in class because of the lack of language skill. Then monolingual would definitely be

more concentrated on actual detail of the class. Not only her, there is a lot of opinions about

negative points of being bilingual. Two of them are those children will get stressed out from

pressures from other people and the child might start to think that learning language is just to

please his/her parents. When people don’t have the ability to reach a goal, they will want another

person who has it. Those bilingual people will get stressed out eventually by getting asked and

pressured by school, parents, or company because monolinguals could expect too much on

bilinguals. I actually have seen my bilingual friend who was born to be a bilingual because of

her foreign parent being asked to speak another language by classmates and she was obviously
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feeling uncomfortable. From this experience, I could imagine those bilingual kids loosing their

place in school which would never be a positive effect. I also said that children could find

learning language is not fun, but they have to do it just to make their parents happy. It is true that

those young kids could loose the important reasons/points to study extra subject. Especially

when they don’t find it interesting or fun. This could also lead them to feel never want to study

again.

But beyond those negative effects, other positive effects are more important, I’d say. I can

assure that the person would have a better creativity than other people who only speak one

language. Because they can communicate with people from other countries, they can share and

learn a bunch of different points of view. In 1922, in “Logico-Tractatus Philosophicus”, the

philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my

world.” It’s a clear fact that the more words you have, the bigger your sight becomes. In my

experience, there was a difference between histories in the States and Japan about nuclear bomb

the US dropped in Hiroshima, Japan. If I could not understand English, I could have not

experienced this while I was on the exchange program. By learning another culture as you learn

its language, the person can include the differences between his/her own culture and others and

create something new. The person would even be able to find the normal things more important

or interesting by changing the point of view that he/she leaned by communicating with foreign

people.

Those are the reasons why I still think being bilingual is important than anything else.

When the person has no idea what to do for the future, if he/she could at least acquire another
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language, it will become a huge help/power later. Bilingual is something everyone in the world

can become. There is no limit, there is no impossibility. Also if those people who were born to

be a bilingual and stressed out right now could start to think positively and appreciate their

specialty, they would be able to have a brighter future.

 Works Cited

James, Lane. “The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World.” Babbel Magazine, 24 April 2016,

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world/

Kristina R Olson Ph.D. “When Does Bilingual Help or Hurt?” Psychology Today, 27 April 2014

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/developing-minds/201404/when-does-

bilingualism-help-or-hurt

Ludwig, Wittgenstein. “Logico-Tractatus Philosophicus” 1922 from Great Philosophers, 2002

https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Wittgenstein/wittgenstein.html