"The Beauty of the Code Switch" by Nina Pantaleone

Language is the ultimate gift in this life. It is the aspect of our culture that sets us apart from other species. It's what makes us evolve. It's what makes us sophisticated. It's what makes us the smartest species on Earth. Somehow, we take it for granted everyday.

Some of us have the gift of being able to communicate and express ourselves in more than one language.  We can say what we need to say, and we have more pretty words to choose from.  

Learning another language besides your native tongue has numerous benefits, including keeping the brain active and being able to build metaphorical bridges between you and others.  

Language and writing intersect in many ways (clearly!)  However, the unsung hero of these ways is the fact that multiple languages coming together in a person’s brain can enable them to have a unique writing style.  This could manifest in many different ways, but many writers take stylistic and structural inspiration from more than one language.  

To speak from my own experience, I am proficient in three languages: English, Spanish, and Italian.  Spanish and Italian are both romance languages, so their structures are similar.  Fortunately, this meant that once I picked up one, it was easier to learn the other.  My brain can now file away the three languages into their own separate linguistic categories, but sometimes while I write, the boundaries between the three become blurred.  I find myself structuring English sentences like a romance language, or I will code switch in the middle of a sentence.  This even happens during my notetaking/planning process of writing creatively.  Parts of my notes will be in one language, and others in another.  I started doing this to practice fluency in writing and to train my brain to become more seamless with sentence structure.  It started as a conscious effort, but now it happens more organically.  

The human brain can do amazing things with language and writing, and many people don’t realize their own linguistic potential.  So learn that second, third, fourth, fifth language, and don’t forget to write in it too!