Testimony 1 - Articles about Bilingualism

25-year-old female, Israeli, bilingual Hebrew and English.

I don’t know what it feels like to be a bilingual. It’s just a fact.

I think that I have an advantage of my other friends that just have one language. I think I have a broader vocabulary than them and I think more about what I mean exactly, because I have both languages. Translations aren’t an exact match, like a word in English wouldn’t exactly mean the same thing in Hebrew, so that would cause me to have to be more exact if I want to say something, or feel that I didn’t exactly say it right in a certain language. So, it gives me more words, and it gives me more thinking about the words than people who just have one language.

Do you ever have difficulties thinking of the right words in the right language? Yes, I do. I don’t know if it’s more difficult than someone who has it in one language.

Do you feel smarter than your non-bilingual friends? Some yes, and some no.

I feel superior to my friends who are fake non-bilinguals. In other words, if you just have one language, if you’re Israeli and all you speak is Hebrew, then I just don’t think about them in bilingual terms. But there are people who came from, let’s say, an English-speaking home yet they don’t have their second language. If they just have Hebrew because the parents weren’t careful about being bilingual, or they didn’t make a fuss about it, then I feel superior.

Are you happy that your parents raised you as a bilingual? Definitely. I like the fact that I know two languages. I like the fact that I like languages in general, and I think languagely, and I like the fact that I have a knack for other languages as well.

A true bilingual is someone that can be IN a Hebrew environment and speak Hebrew and have the Hebrew way of thinking with the Hebrew slang, say eh or em and not um, and think Hebrewly, with Hebrew syntax and everything else, and then that same person is placed in an English environment and the person thinks Englishly - with the English syntax and the English slang and everything else having to do with the language.

I’m a true bilingual, I think. Despite the fact that I can’t always think of words, I think that’s normal, that’s part of you know, having a brain and certain things slip out of the brain. I think I’m a true bilingual because I speak both languages fluently. I’m in a Hebrew environment, I speak Hebrew, and I think in Hebrew except for numbers, and in English I think in English, and I don’t really mix up both languages unless I’m trying to be cute or trying to do something funny.

I don't feel any limitations that result from the fact that I am a bilingual.

I feel happy being a bilingual when I teach a language, I’m an English teacher, and when I teach a structure and I can compare it to the students’ native language, then I’m happy that I’m bilingual, and when I try to learn a new language and then I can compare it to something familiar, then the ability to compare and the ability to analyze the language is because I’m a bilingual.

There are never times that you that I wish I was not a bilingual.

My mother is not a bilingual, I think. She speaks English and she speaks Hebrew, but I don’t think she’s a bilingual because I think her Hebrew vocabulary is limited. In other words, it’s okay for everyday language, but she wouldn’t pick up something to read in Hebrew just like that. It would be more of an effort. So, it’s not equal at all. Her English is much better than her Hebrew. My father - I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. His English is very good. His Hebrew is very good. Maybe the lack of being a bilingual is because he’s unsure of himself in Hebrew so he doesn’t use it. He doesn’t feel he can use it like he should, but his Hebrew is very good and he has a broad vocabulary and he can think Hebrewly very often.

I think that my sister is more comfortable in English and I think that my older brother is more comfortable in Hebrew.

Do I have a secret language? Well, since it’s English and Hebrew, those two languages are common in this country, so it’s not really a secret language any more. As kids, yes English was this secret language for us when we were outside, and I would talk to my younger sister in Hebrew sometimes, thinking that nobody would understand me at home. That was dumb because everyone knows Hebrew, but that was very rare. So the secret language doesn’t work too much, but I think if it was other languages that weren’t so common, then the question would be more relevant.

When I was a kid, speaking English was very, very embarrassing. I wouldn’t talk English in school to my English speaking friends. I can’t even really say how many English speakers I had in my class because nobody knew. They knew about me and I knew about another two girls, but I don’t know if there was anyone else, because we just didn’t use English. Now that I’m older, I speak to my bilingual friends in English or in Hebrew, sometimes sort of mixed, but I can think of several cases where my friends expressed to me how lucky I am that I’m bilingual, but that might have been just because it’s English and not any other language, because English is now important.

Do you ever try to hide the fact that you are a bilingual? No I can’t think of a case like that.

Did your grade school teachers ever have difficulty dealing with bilingual children in class? Not that I can think of.

What would you want to tell your parents about raising bilingual children? Thank you.

What would you like to tell other parents who are debating whether to raise their children as bilinguals? Do it. It’s a very, very good thing to do.

When I was a counselor in camp, I had five and six year old girls that tried to fool around with both languages. It was an English-speaking camp, and in the beginning there were girls that wanted to show that they didn’t know any English. That didn’t work too well, because they didn’t get what they wanted, because since it was an English-speaking camp I "didn’t understand" Hebrew. So then they would speak in English but in Hebrew structure, like I am holeiching and things like that, which was very cute, to see how five or six year old girls have an understanding of the two languages already.

Do you feel that you have a greater interest in studying languages as a result of being a bilingual? Yes.

Do you translate words naturally from one language to another? I think so.

Do you ever mix words or languages when you speak or write? Yes, that’s happened sometimes.

I think that my parents’ way of dealing with bilingualism was that, Hebrew we’re gonna get from outside the home, so we didn’t work on learning Hebrew, and English - I remember, as a kid, when I didn’t know how to say a word, my parents wouldn’t let me say it in Hebrew, but I would have to look it up in a dictionary, and speaking Hebrew in the house was a no-no, and we learned to read and write in English at a very, very young age, and we were encouraged to read a lot in English. Those are the things that I can think of, like off the cuff.