Embrace Your Language

[Music]

[Applause]

good evening

buenas noches guten abende banswari

masalher do you speak more than one

language

there are so many benefits to being

bilingual

being bilingual can increase brain power

it can give children an academic

advantage

increase awareness of other cultures and

make travel easier

and more enjoyable because you can

communicate with more people

being bilingual also opens up more

opportunities for jobs

just like it did for my mom my mom has a

job as a special education

teacher assistant she translates for

parents who speak arabic

my mom is very valued in her career

because she is bilingual

i am also bilingual did you know in

arabic

you read and write right to left instead

of left to right

and that arabic is the official language

in 26

countries there are also 100 words

for camel that’s right 100

words arabic is now

the seventh most commonly spoken

non-english language

in u.s households an estimated 1.1

million people ages 5 and older

speak arabic at home an increase of 29

between 2010 and 2014.

if you are bilingual it is important to

keep your first language

and not forget about it for example

the arabic language dates back to more

than 1

500 years ago and people still speak it

today

including my family being born into a

family that speaks more than one

language

is a gift don’t take it for granted

one of my wishes is that schools have

more languages for children to learn

there are six thousand five hundred

languages spoken in the world

today obviously some are not as commonly

spoken as others

yet most schools only offer languages

like spanish

or french we’re doing a great job at

keeping some languages well-known

but what about the ones that we’ve

already forgotten about

languages look like basque navajo or anu

one way to keep these languages alive is

to introduce them when children are

young

research shows the best age to learn a

new language

is at 10 and it begins to get more

difficult

at 12. my brother and i

were not interested in learning arabic

when we were young

but at the age of five my mom started

teaching my brother and me

arabic at home starting with the letters

there are 28 letters in the arabic

alphabet

we read stories and started to write

small words like our names

at the age of seven my mom and dad found

a teacher who gives arabic lessons

so my brother and i started going there

from then on i started getting more

and more interested in this language i

wanted to learn

more

it would have been great if i could

continue to learn my language at my

school too

i think everyone should feel this way

proud of your language

after all being bilingual is one of the

things that makes you unique

or special among others even if you

aren’t bilingual

i encourage you to try new language

a lot of languages are becoming

forgotten because they’re so old

but we have to keep speaking them we

can’t forget our past it is what makes

us who we are

today

you