A woman named Ksenia shared her story with Brightside to tell about the difficulties of speaking different languages as a bilingual person.
The story was originally posted on Brightside.
She told Brightside: ‘’Hi, my name is Ksenia and I’m bilingual.point 99 | There are many of us in the world — nowadays, more than half of the population speak at least 2 languages in their everyday life.point 206 |
This number continues to grow thanks to travel, globalization, the Internet, and mixed marriages.point 84 | But even an adult can become bilingual if they live in a different country and speak the local language more often than their mother tongue which they use only to communicate with their families.point 246 |
’’point 6 | 1
‘’I, as a bilingual person, usually have, and know which language I dream in and whether it’s worth pushing your child to study as many languages as possible.’’
‘’When I was little, my parent got divorced and my mother and I moved to Yugoslavia where she got married again. In Belgrade, I went to kindergarten, and then to school. I had to speak Serbian there, while at home, I studied Russian. My grandmother would bring me Russian books and textbooks. I also watched Russian cartoons on TV. I spoke Russian only at home.’’
‘’When I was a child, I never really thought about this difference. I just knew that there were people to whom I had to speak in Serbian, and there were others with whom I used Russian. It’s like when you call people by their names — you just know that a person won’t react a certain way if you call them by the wrong name.’’
‘’My brother who is half Serbian couldn’t speak until the age of 3.point 171 | His speech therapist said it was because he was surrounded by people who spoke 2 languages.point 247 |
The child realized that the same things were named in different words but his brain needed more time to decode what he was hearing.point 108 | Unfortunately, when my brother began to speak, we came back to Russia and stopped speaking Serbian.point 192 | As a result, my brother began to use only Russian and became monolingual.point 253 |
He still can’t speak Serbian despite his multiple attempts to learn the language.point 71 | ’’point 77 | 1
‘’As for me, I continued to read books and watch movies in Serbian, so it helped me to keep my knowledge.point 166 | 12 years later, I was sent to a sports tournament in Serbia and I could speak Serbian freely just in a few days thanks to my everyday communication with the locals.point 300 |
It was difficult only in the beginning when I could understand my interlocutor but it took some time to come up with answers to things.point 111 | It’s like when you’re taking an exam: you know everything but you’re too nervous and can’t find the right words under pressure.point 225 |
’’point 6 | 1
‘’Later, I moved to Serbia, got a job there, lived with a Serbian family, and spoke both languages every day. Thanks to this experience, I soon became bilingual again.’’
‘’This is a common situation.point 296 |
Milla Jovovich, for example, was born in Kyiv to a Russian actress and a Serbian doctor of Montenegrin descent.point 93 | When she was a child, her mother tongue was Russian and perhaps Serbian.point 153 | But her family immigrated to the US and she began to speak only English.point 212 |
As a result, Russian became a foreign language to her because she didn’t speak it on a regular basis.point 85 | ’’point 91 | 1
‘’Natalia Vodianova, on the contrary, became bilingual when she was an adult. She began to study English when she became a model. She manages to speak both languages perfectly due to the fact that she constantly travels between English-speaking and Russian-speaking environments.’’
‘’There was a period when I lived in Serbia for a year and couldn’t talk to Russian-speaking people, and we only sent e-mails to each other. Then I came to Moscow for a couple of days and couldn’t speak Russian for a whole day. Once again, I was too nervous. My brain could understand the words but I was unable to form my own sentences.’’
‘’The memory capacity is limited. The vocabulary of each language in a bilingual person is usually smaller than the one of a monolingual person. But when a person starts speaking one language more, their brain makes more room for it.
To make your passive and active vocabularies bigger, you have to talk and write more, watch more movies, and read classic literature.’’
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