On being bilingual.  What is the category of bilingualism?  How does one identify themselves as being bilingual?  The bilingual question is one that many of us growing up in multicultural contexts, and far away from our place of birth, ask as an intricate part of our identities.  Though this blog post may cater to our personal egos, I’d like to entertain the idea of the bilingual effect on our mind and spirit.  Yes, spirit! The constant duality our ego goes through on a daily basis is mind and spirit-boggling.  As my personal quest these days is to feel more, I wanted to share my reflection on feeling the two languages I have spoken since my toddler years: English, Spanish and why not, Spanglish.

As for the mind, our constant language-switching and mixing of the two (or more) languages we speak is a combination of torment and enjoyment.  As a bilingual educator, I constantly teach in English while sometimes in complete awe, a Spanish word slips in shifting the whole lesson into one in Spanglish!  Sure my students enjoy this!  As for our spirit, bilingualism turns our experiences into the duality of the two languages and what that entails.  Thanks to my anthropology studies in college, I see how interconnected language is to culture, food, mannerisms, idioms, religion, fashion styles, etc.  The “feeling” languages spark, goes beyond the intellectual capacity of communicating with one another.  Here, we get to feel, speak to, react to and delve into another world wrapped in the facade of a language.  Our spirit is constantly nourished by experiences and the more languages we endeavor in, the merrier and colorful our lives can be.  The ability to verbally express in multiple forms (or languages) is a vehicle for our minds and spirits to expand beyond capacity.  What a beauty that is!

Lastly, nothing like watching your own culture from an outsider’s point of view!  As dual speakers, bilinguals, or whatever you want to call it, we transcend the everyday experiences to another level.  Bilinguals and multilinguals, remember language is as vivid as other living organisms.  Spanish and English change as we speak.  How many words, mannerisms, jokes or idioms were created today?  Who knows!  If we get on the wagon of feeling languages and learning from them (because truly, language has life of its own) we learn to coexist.  With this everlasting form of communication, why not embrace it and celebrate it as it's the access many of us have to more ways of living, communicating, feeling, seeing, joking…las posibilidades son endless!