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