Hello, returning and new readers and welcome to my latest
post. Before getting into this week’s post, I wanted to apologize for my lack
of content these past few months. As a second semester sophomore in
college, I wanted take everything in and fully enjoy one of my last semesters on my college's campus before embarking on a journey to study abroad for an entire academic school-year. That being said, it is
now summer, which means that more consistent content will be on its way. I am
planning on posting once a week from now on and am excited to say that I will be writing blog posts about my experiences in France and Italy, in hopes to reach fluency in French and Italian, so make sure to stay tuned for them.
“Testing one two, one two, yeah, not one, but two, como tú. You know it’s true. Dos idiomas son más and it’s getting
big, we’re reaching critical mass. Nuestro mundo de dos mundos será el mundo.
When mundane is something unknown and nobody feels alone…”
I have recently been thinking about topic ideas for this
week’s post and have come to a realization about just how much being bilingual
has impacted my life. To this day, I thank my parents for every waking
hour spent with me speaking to me in their mother tongue. I thank them for
their patience, love, and dedication to never give up despite what societal
norms may be thought out to be. I thank them for taking me to music lessons
with a native Spanish speaker, for enrolling me in a bilingual elementary
school, and for prioritizing language classes above everything else. When I say this, I hope to not give anyone the impression
that I was not brought up in a household that valued a well-rounded education,
but rather am thankful for having parents who supported me to take three
foreign languages at my high-school and now two new languages at the college level when nobody else encouraged me to do so. At
my school and in numerous other occasions, being bilingual has been looked down upon, it
has been misrepresented, and, worse yet, has discouraged millions of once
bilingual Americans to give up their mother tongues in order to fit in, or so
they believe.
If you gain anything out of this post, I want you to know
that there are millions of other bilingual and multilingual individuals
out there who have faced some kind of discrimination throughout their lives, but who have persevered despite all odds and any obstacles that may have come their way. In
the society in which we live, it is almost impossible to not have a week go by
without having someone questioning you and your choice to preserve a part of
your culture that you hold so dearly to your heart. I am here with you. I am
here for you if nobody else is to tell you that being bilingual is beautiful.
It is a gift with which you were born, or that you have cultivated with so much
passion that you deserve to share with others and to to the rest of the world. If you
are bilingual, you know that you may not belong neither here nor there, but
rather to at least two different, yet completely unique worlds. As I have
mentioned in another one of my posts, one of my most defining moments growing
up was when I questioned my own identity. At that moment, my mom
reaffirmed my love for both my English (American) and Spanish (Colombian) self
and told me that I was a world citizen and she was right.
As a bilingual, you are prepared with the necessary tools to
have an open mind, an open heart, and most importantly, the ability to
understand others’ thought processes when nobody else can. I am still a firm
believer that the most thought-provoking, deep, and meaningful conversations of
my life have all been when speaking to another person in their native
tongue. Even though we have technology and dictionaries, I have never been able
to replace any of those tools with real human interaction. I will give you a
short anecdote of a recent experience that I had this past semester when
teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to a Salvadorian family. Despite
gaining more experience teaching English and practicing English with the family
with whom I worked, what I learned the most was the beauty that bilingualism
is. My most memorable moments working with them were not when I saw their
improvement in their English-speaking abilities, but rather when they asked me
questions about America, our way of life, and any doubts that they may have had
in their mother tongue. You could tell that any kind of barrier that that had
existed prior to that moment had been completely erased. The mother instantly
lost any kind of physical tension that had prevented her from speaking from the
heart. Those are the moments for which I live.
When other students, or adults ask me what my future career
path will be, I prefer to be transparent and say that I have no idea. On the
other hand, something that I do know is that if I could leave my footprint on
this world by doing one good deed, I would choose to be a mentor, a friend, and
a companion to anyone out there who has been negatively affected by the current
stigma about bilingualism, multilingualism, and multiculturalism. All of the negativity, the hate, and the hurt that
has brought millions of other bilingual individuals down should be replaced
with a constant source of love and support. My experiences teaching and
mentoring children, adolescents, and adults in Spanish, French, and Italian have
made me become a more tolerant, compassionate, and patient individual. I have
witnessed others about to burst into tears due to fear or confusion of what
was to come, because they simply could not express themselves as fully, or as
transparently as they could in their mother tongues as they could in English.
When nobody else encouraged my friends to continue to pursue a language
full-time, whether if it was through a job, or by declaring a language minor, I
was the friend to lend a helping hand. Whatever your life goal may be, let
the fire and passion within you transform your life vision and dedicate your
life to making that goal become a reality. You are our future. We are our future.
We need more bilingual individuals to share their
compassion, their understanding, and their creativity in order to solve some of
the world’s most complex twenty-first century problems. Mistranslations can
often lead to misinterpretations, tension, and uncertainty instead of mutual
comprehension, a genuine desire to understand other points-of-view, and most
importantly, the incredible ability to reach others’ minds, souls, and hearts.
Being bilingual is a feeling that you cannot describe. It is a way of life like
no other, allowing you to have full communication with family members and
friends around the world with little to no boundaries. I hope that you continue
to share your gift with others and to not be ashamed of who you are: every
living particle that makes up your being, including all of your mother tongues.
If you are interested in reading more of my posts about my bilingualism, make sure to give these previous blog posts a read:
http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/04/language-and-culture.html
:
http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-power-of-language.html
