What's it like to be bilingual?
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions from curious kids just like you, and it's our job to find answers. The next time you ride a bus, a train, an airplane, take a moment and listen to the voices around you. Are they all speaking the same language? Probably not.

Almost half the people in the world speak more than one language, and we know that includes a lot of you who listen to Vote Why. So we thought it might be fun to do an episode about all the different languages we speak and what it's like to speak more than one language. And we're going to hear from a lot of you!

We asked those of you who speak multiple languages to send us a voice memo talking a little bit about what that's like. And more than 70 of you responded, like Sofia, who speaks both English and Filipino and lives in the Philippines. The reason why I enjoy being a bilingual is because I'm able to connect with other Filipinos in my country and learn more about my natural roots.

My name is Leah and I'm 10 years old. My name is Fiji and I'm 12 years old. We live in Kroche Province, Cambodia. And we're sisters. We know three languages: English, Khmer and Kero.

One of the good things about being trilingual is you can understand more people and it's also fun learning other languages. One word in Khmer is Sosde, which means hello. In Krau, Banyanjong means what do you have to eat and it's a greeting. Hi, I'm Audrey. What I love about being bilingual is that I have a secret language against my mum. My favourite word is in French, bibliothèque.

That means library. Ooh, a secret language that your mom doesn't know. That's pretty good. My name is Guga. I speak three languages, Polish, Portuguese, and English. What I like about speaking three languages is it makes me special. I get to learn about three cultures, and I get to eat burgers for breakfast, churrasco for lunch, and pierogi for dinner.

Hello, my name is Naya. I am eight years old. I know three languages: Arabic, French, and English. Knowing different languages is important to me because I can communicate with people who don't speak English or other languages. Naya, that's a great one, being able to speak to people who might not speak English or might not speak French. You can have so many choices when you speak multiple languages.

My name is Sophie. I'm seven years old. I live in Canada, BC. And what I like about speaking two languages is that you get to talk more than normal and you can go more places and talk to those people. And what horse is in French is Cheval. Bye. Thank you.

We also got notes from a lot of you teaching the rest of us how to say something in one of the other languages you speak. My name is Francisco. I'm six years old. I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina. What I like about speaking more than one language is to understand YouTube gaming videos and podcasts like this one. Also English music.

A phrase in Spanish could be "Pero por qué?" which means "But why?" Hi, my name is Leah. I'm six years old and I live in New York. I speak English and Yiddish. There's a phrase in Yiddish: Ich bin zis. It means "I am cute." Hello, my name is Hannah. I'm ten years old. I'm from South Korea. I speak English and Korean.

A traditional way to say hello in Korean is, but it literally means, did you eat? Hi, my name is Maya, and I'm four and a half years old, and I'm from New Jersey, and I speak English and Spanish. I want to teach you guys how to say sloth in Spanish. Say it with me. Hello, my name is Marlon. I'm eight years old. I live in France.

I speak French and English. I like to tell secrets to friends that speak the same language as me. I usually think in French even when I speak English. Sometimes it's not continue speaking English because all my day was in French. And what word do you want to teach to the But Why listeners?

But why? Would you say mais pourquoi? Repeat after me. Mais pourquoi? Again. Mais pourquoi? I'm going to be working on all of those for the next three weeks. And we're going to have more at the end of the episode. So stay tuned if you want to learn some more phrases in other languages.

In addition to all of you who are experts at speaking your languages, we called up someone who's an expert in languages in general. Anna Babel is a professor of Hispanic linguistics at The Ohio State University. A linguistics professor or a linguist is somebody who studies languages. I have the coolest job in the world because I get to go around and talk to people all the time. And then I think about how people talk.

and try to understand how people talk differently and what we know about people by listening to the way that they talk.

My specialty is looking at who we are and how our identities, our personal identity, affects the way that we talk. So I'm interested in that because a lot of us speak more than one language. And so sometimes we can speak two languages at one time. We can switch back and forth. Sometimes we save one language for certain spaces and another language for other spaces. So there's a lot of different ways to be bilingual, to speak more than one language, but all of them are interesting.

When it comes to speaking more than one language, Anna says there's no hard and fast definition of how well you have to speak before you can call yourself bilingual, someone who speaks two languages, or multilingual, someone who speaks many languages. I know a lot of kids can say ni hao or a lot of kids can say hola because of Dora. That means that you already speak a part of the language. And there's not like a certain definition.

point, you know, there's not like a line where you cross the line and all of a sudden you speak Spanish or you speak Mandarin. Usually what happens is that people learn more and more pieces and they start learning how to put those pieces together. And so there's kind of different steps that you go through. One is knowing and recognizing some words and

Another step is being able to have a short conversation. How old are you? What grade are you in? Maybe what's the weather doing where you live? And from there, people just get more and more complex and they start to get more and more different topics that they can talk about. My name is Luca. I'm 10 years old. I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And my question is, how many languages can a person speak fluently?

Yeah, as far as we know, there's no limit. So it's very common for people to speak three or four languages. If you speak more than five or six languages, then polyglot is this word that comes from Greek, and it means many tongues.

there have been people who speak 70 or 80 languages. Can you imagine keeping 70 or 80 different languages and all those vocabularies straight in your own head? You know, it's amazing what people can do with language. We're kind of little language learning machines. One thing is being able to speak a lot of languages, but also sometimes people understand languages that they don't speak. So I'm thinking if you speak 70 or 80 languages, how many could you understand? Like you could probably understand double that number.

There are more than 7,000 languages currently being spoken around the world. And Anna says you can probably keep learning languages your whole life. There's no limit to the number you can speak. Sometimes you learn multiple languages because the people you live with, like your parents or caregivers, speak different languages. So maybe you speak one language at home and a different language in the shops or when you're out and about with your friends. Hi, I'm Evan. I'm four years old.

Hola, soy Toby and I'm nine years old. Hello, ich bin Martin and I'm six years old. We live in Maconji, Pennsylvania. And we speak three languages. Espanol, English, and Deutsch, German. We live in a multicultural home where we learn the languages from the countries our parents are from. We speak all languages because our parents

Where parents always talk to us in the languages. Adios. Goodbye. Auf Wiedersehen. My name is Julian and I'm five years old. What languages do you speak? English and Spanish. What do you like about being able to speak more than one language? I can talk to more people.

What more people can you talk to? Like my teacher, grandparents, and my family in Mexico. That's right. And my cousins. Who teaches you Spanish? My teacher and my grandparents. My name is Iyam, and I am 11 years old, and I speak English and Spanish because my dad is from the USA and my mom is from Mexico.

One thing I like about being bilingual is that I can understand people both in Mexico and in the USA. A phrase that I would like to teach you in Spanish is, yo te quiero mas, which means, I love you more in Spanish. I really like this saying because my mom always says she loves me, and I always say, I love her more.

Some kids learn to speak a new language that maybe no one in their home speaks. There are language immersion schools where you learn a new language and go to school at the same time. And we heard from several of you who go to that kind of school. Hi, but why? My name is Lydia. I'm 10 years old and I live in Exeter, Devon, England. I'm bilingual. I speak French as well as English. I used to go to school in French, although now I don't, so I speak French less often, but I'm still fluent.

Something you might not know in French is that bonjour actually means good day instead of hello, so you can't really use it in the night. You have to bonsoir, goodbye or au revoir. Hi, my name is Sophia and I am 14 years old. And my name is Maddie and I am 10 years old. We live in Salt Lake City, Utah. We both are fluent in Chinese or Zhonglan. We have done a dual immersion program at our school from the age of six, which means that we have spent half of each day at our school learning Chinese. We've even

learning subjects like science, kusha, and math, shusha, and Chinese. My Chinese name is Lufei Ya and I have been learning Chinese for nine years. Learning Chinese has helped me appreciate other cultures because I'm more aware of how different people do different things around the world. It has also given me cool new experiences like talking to tourists that come to visit. Today I'm going to teach you how to say skiing in Chinese because it's very popular in Utah.

It's Hua Shui. My Chinese name is Lu Man Ling and I have been learning Chinese for five years. Speaking Chinese is helping me understand cultures and it is super fun to learn about. I love celebrating their holidays and being able to speak with my sister.

because me and her have our own secret language i love cats so i'm going to teach you cat in chinese it it is mao my name is alyssa i'm seven years old i live in bluebell pennsylvania um i can speak three languages english cantonese and vietnamese what i like about speaking

different languages is if you go to a country that speaks that language, you can understand more. And to say, how are you in Cantonese is, nèi hô ma. If I'm going to Vietnam and I'm saying hi to my grandma, I can say, chào chào bà ác.

Hello, my name is Tom. I'm nine and a half years old and I live in Grenoble, France. I'm Sri Lankan, I speak Hebrew, Shalom, I speak French, Bonjour, and I speak English. And my question is: Why is it easier for kids than adults to learn a new language?

Hi, my name is Micah and I live in New Rochelle and I'm five years old. And my question is, why do my parents say that it's harder to learn a language when you're grown up than when you're a kid? Both Tom and Micah want to know why sometimes people say it's easier to learn New

new languages when you're a kid than it is if you're trying to start fresh with a new language when you're an adult. That is a fact. Kids learn language really easily. Kids are language learning sponges. We don't know exactly why. Some people think it's because kids' brains are just better at learning new things. And some people have said that around 11, 12, 13 is kind of a sharp cutoff point when you can't learn new languages as well as you did when you were younger.

When an adult is trying to learn a new language, a lot of times the teacher will come in and say like, "No, you're wrong. Red mark. That's bad."

But if you think about a baby learning a new language, when you pick up a baby and they start to say words to you, how do you react? You say, oh, good job. You're doing so well. Oh, that's so great. Let's try it this way. So that kind of feedback can make a difference in the motivation that people have when they learn a language. Learning languages can be a roller coaster, but hang in there. Progress might be slow at first, but effort counts.

Remember that everyone started as a beginner at some point. So don't give up. Keep going. Keep learning. Every mistake you make is an opportunity to grow and improve. For example, Vera from Spain finds English difficult sometimes.

I live in Spain but I know English because my mom is from America and it's kind of like hard for me because when I talk a lot of Spanish like when I go to America

Well, I don't really know all of the words because I talk more Spanish. So I need to go and tell my mom how to say it and blah, blah, blah. Okay? Coming up, we learn new words and phrases in the languages you are teaching us. Hi, my name is Alexandria. I am a teacher.

Plus, should you learn more than one language?

I'm Jane Lindholm, and este es But Why, un podcast para niños curiosos. Y ni, but why, poricástico a lo todo para dici. That was Spanish and Swahili for This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. Today we're hearing from so many But Why listeners about what it's like to speak more than one language. My name is Emi. I'm nine years old and I live in Yerevan, Armenia. I speak two languages.

Armenian and English. I think it's really cool that I speak in two languages because I get to speak with to everybody I know, Americans, Armenians, everyone. And I think differently in Armenian because I think about my home, my Armenian traditions, my Armenian family, and

And English is the same thing but only in America. Something that American kids say a lot is, "I love to play with my friends." And in Armenian, we say that as, "Yeshabim sirum kharal ima gerneri hel." Hi, my name is Scarlet. I'm 10 years old. I live in Portugal and I can speak three languages. My day is mostly in English.

So English feels like I'm walking. It's very easy. At home, I speak Polish with my dad. It feels like jumping. I can do it, but it takes more effort.

And finally, I can speak French because I was born in Monaco. French feels like people are welcoming me somewhere new. It makes me feel connected when I use it. French feels like I'm stretching a sore muscle. It feels good, but it takes a lot of energy from me. And finally...

We moved to Portugal a year ago, so I'm currently learning Portuguese. Wish me luck! Who knew that using multiple languages is like stretching a muscle? Some of you have also sent us questions about language. My name is Samuel. I'm from California. My age is four. And my question is, why are languages so important?

Helping us answer your questions and understand how we learn languages and why they're important is Anna Babel. She studies languages as a professor of linguistics. So every single human being in the world who communicates with other people has a language. And that's kind of amazing because there's not a lot of things that we can say that we all have in common, but we all have language in common even if they're different languages.

Your language says a lot about who you are and where you come from and who you talk to. And languages have so many different sounds, so many different kinds of words, so much differences in grammar that it really says something about how much there is that's different about people all over the world, but also how much there is that's the same. Here's a question from Ava about a specific language.

I live in Yonkers, New York. I'm nine years old and my question is, why does almost no one speak Quechua? Actually, a lot of people speak Quechua. It's spoken by eight to ten million people. So Quechua is about the same size as languages like Somali, Swedish, Bulgarian. You

You might not have heard as much about Quechua because it's still a lot smaller than languages like English or Mandarin or Hindi. And it's not very often taught in schools in the U.S. because it's not a native language of this country.

But it is very important in countries like Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, where it's an official language. It was probably used by the Inca Empire. In fact, we have documents from the Spanish showing that Quechua was used in the area that's now Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

even before they arrived in the 1500s. So it's a language with a lot of history, and it's also a language that people enjoy speaking because they say it's funny, it's very good for making jokes, it's very expressive, and it's also a language that people use to identify themselves as people who are Quechua. So it's a cultural category as well as a language category.

I'm glad you mentioned jokes because that is one really important piece of language is humor and being able to play with words and play with language and use words in different ways to convey different meanings, whether you're speaking sarcastically or making a joke. And when I lived in

in South America and was communicating constantly in Spanish, which was not my first language, the hardest part for me was to fully convey my own personality and be able to make jokes. You have to have a certain level of fluency to be able to make jokes in a second or third language. And until you can do that, sometimes it feels like,

Well, people don't really know who you are. It can be really hard when you don't fluently speak another language and you're trying to communicate your personality as well as just say, you know, can I have that bag of oranges or where does this bus go to?

Yeah, I think you're right. That's one of the most advanced skills is being able to be funny or being able to be authentic in a language that you're still in the process of learning. So my daughter speaks Spanish at home, but when she goes to school in her Spanish class, it's sometimes hard for her because they use different words and it's a lot of things that we don't do at home.

But she's really, really good at being funny, being authentic, being respectful in Spanish. So when you're talking about, you know, different ways that you can express yourself in different languages,

How can we all think about maybe just ways to give people space or think about them as whole people, even if they're not as fluent in the language that we're communicating together in as maybe we are? Like maybe your grandparents don't speak English as well as you do or Chinese as well as you do. And, you know, we just mentioned it can be hard to bring your whole self to a conversation if you're struggling to find the words. So how can we kind of

be friendly to people who we're trying to communicate with in all these different ways and different languages. That's a really good point. Using a language is so much a part of who we are and of ourselves that it can be easy to ignore people who don't speak a language that you're using with a lot of ease.

So I remember when I was learning Spanish, I was out with some friends and I think we went to the bus station and I went to buy a ticket and one of them turned to me and she said, oh, you understand money already. I think it's easy to mistake somebody having trouble with the language for not being competent in other ways or not being able to do simple things.

Treating people as people, no matter how they speak, is a very important thing to do. Hi, my name is Mila. I'm five years old in San Diego, California. And my question is, why?

How do people communicate if they speak different languages? There's a lot of ways that we can communicate people without using just language. We can always use gestures. We can always work on a task together. So if we're thinking about grandparents, you can always maybe work on cooking with your grandparents or play a game with your grandparents.

We can think creatively about how to communicate with each other even without a common language. You know, people use a lot of eye contact and a lot of facial expressions when they talk anyway.

And then I think part of the fun of working with somebody who's speaking a different language is playing guessing games. You can guess at the words that people are trying to tell you and you can teach each other. So what are some good ways to learn new languages? Annabelle has a suggestion for us.

I'm 10 years old. I'm from Palm Coast, Florida. I'm trying to learn Spanish. So here's a tip. If there's like a movie that you really like and you like know every word, put the captions on and watch it in that language because that's how I'm trying to learn Spanish.

You know, there's no bad way to learn a language, but definitely the best way to learn it is from other people. If you're a kid in a family where multiple languages are spoken, or maybe you go to school in one language, but the language that your parents or grandparents or other family members speak is a different language...

And you're like, oh, I have to speak in this other language and it's not as easy for me or I don't speak this with my friends. Or it's maybe kind of embarrassing sometimes that my friends all speak one language with their families and I speak a different one. Do you have a way for us to think about that in a positive way? Yeah, I think the main thing to keep in mind is that it is perfectly normal to speak more than one language or to speak differently at home than in other settings.

that is perfectly normal. And so when a kid doesn't understand that, kids who can sometimes be hard on other kids, right, when they see something different, I think maybe our job is to open their minds a little bit, to help them understand the world a little bit more completely and to say, hey,

In my family or in my house, this is how we do things. And I think it's probably different in your house, but that doesn't mean that one way is better than another. It just means that we all have differences. We have differences in the way we dress. We have differences in the way we cook. We have differences in the way that we speak to members of our community. And that's all good. That's part of the richness of being a human being. What if what you actually need is to convince your parents or...

or aunts and uncles or grandparents or caregivers or foster families that you want to learn their other languages and they're not teaching you. How can we convince our adults that we want to know the other languages that they know? You know, it's funny because kids are super sneaky. Kids hear a lot more than adults realize.

And what language researchers have found is that even when adults try not to teach their children a certain language, if the adults are speaking it, the children can learn it. So children do not need permission to learn a language. So it's okay to kind of sneakily listen to what your adults are saying. It is okay to be a super sneaky spy sometimes.

and to keep your ears open, and then to use those tools when they're useful to you. You heard it here, folks. It's okay to be a super sneaky spy and listen to what your adults are saying if you're trying to learn their language. Now let's hear from kids on what their experiences learning a second language have been like.

My name is Emlyn. I am five and I am bilingual in English and Dutch. This week I was writing my own storybook in English with my mum. I wanted to write There Was a Nice Person, but even though I said this out loud, when I looked at my writing, I had not written the word person in English, but the word mens, which means person in Dutch. I didn't even realise I had done it.

Hi, I am Gabriel. I am seven years old and I live in London, UK. I am trilingual. At school I speak English but at home I speak Italian and French.

When I was little, I was quadrilingual because I lived in Hong Kong. But I forgot the Hong Kong one. But I need to practice to be able to read and write well. It can be very confusing with the different writing. Here's how you order in English. Can I have a fish and chips? In Italian, posso avere dei spaghetti per favore al pomodoro?

In French. Je peux avoir un pain au chocolat, s'il vous plaît? Thank you. Merci. Merci. Au revoir. Ciao. Bye. All right. Want to broaden your language skills a little bit more? Let's get ready to immerse ourselves in the world of languages. So many of you shared with us about the languages you speak and gave us some tips for how to say some easy words and phrases. We've heard some of those throughout the episode, but I still want to know more. So let's hear them.

My name is Haya. I'm five years old. I'm from Lebanon, Beirut. I want to teach you my favorite sentence at Arabic. That is, I love you, mom, at Arabic. It goes like this. My name is Harisa and I live in Belgium, Zaventem. Kind of a fifth language. I speak Hindi, Gujarati, English,

French and Dutch. And I would like to teach you a Dutch sentence of some basic things you can say. Goeiemorgen. Goeiemiddag. Dankjewel. I said hello. Good morning. Goedien.

My name is Elena. I'm six years old. I speak Vietnamese and English. This is how you say hello or bye in Vietnamese. Ciao! My name is Ella. I'm five years old and I'm from Florida. I speak Portuguese and Polish. And I love Batuay. I love Batuay. I love Batuay.

Hi, I am Sophie. I live in London, England and French with my mum, Italian with my dad and English with my brother. Do you want to play with me?

In Italian you say Ciao, vuoi giocare con me? In French you say Salut, tu veux jouer avec moi? And that way we can all play together in different countries Merci, thank you

My name is Nala and I'm from Poland. And what two languages do you speak? English and Polish. What word or phrase would you like to teach the But Why audience? Hello, you say dzień dobry and goodbye, you say do widzenia. Hello, my name is Timothy. I'm a triangle. I'm five years old. I live in Paris.

The three languages that I can speak are Chinese, French, English. The things that I like to be a triangle is I can read lots of different books and talk to different people from other countries.

I can teach you, but why in French and Chinese? My name is Lucas and I am six years old and I am trilingual. I live in Vienna, Austria.

I speak German, English and French. Hallo is hello in German.

And "Bonjour" is "Hello" in French. Hello, I'm Tavie. I live in Wales. I'm six. So my name's Tavie. I live in Buron, Cymru. I like speaking to Landrigo because it's fun and because my little brother speaks Welsh and Mummy doesn't, we can have midnight feeds without Mummy knowing what we say.

Hi, my name is Anderson and I am seven years old and I live in Newcastle, Washington and I'm bilingual and I can speak English, Chinese, French, and Spanish and this is how you say hello in all of them.

Hello, ni hao, bonjour, and hola. And this is my Chinese name, jie chu. Wow, that is so amazing. I loved learning all these new phrases. And it is so cool to hear you all speaking the languages that you speak at home, at school, and out in your communities. Did any of you get inspired to learn a new language from this episode to add to your linguistic repertoire? Let us know.

Thanks to Anna Babel for sharing her expertise about languages with us as well in this episode. Anna is a professor of Hispanic linguistics at The Ohio State University. Maybe if languages really interest you, you'll become a linguist someday.

That's it for today. Now, if you have a question about anything, send it to us. We love to help get answers to all kinds of questions. Ask an adult to help you record yourself asking and then send the audio file to questions at but why kids dot org. We love hearing your first name, how old you are and where you're from, too.

The Boatwide team includes Melody Beaudet, Kiana Haskin, and me, Jane Lindholm. Our show is produced at Vermont Public, and we're distributed by PRX. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PRX.