biligualism essays

biligualism essays I was born and raised in Taiwan, therefore I think my first language should be considered as mandarin. My problem to define myself is that because even though I was living in a mandarin dominated community, I start studying in a total English environment starting at kindergarten. (I was in an international school that only teaches English and no other languages). The family that I grew up is a bit complicated to explain also. My father and mother speaks to me in mandarin, my grandparent speaks to me in Taiwanese while my grandparent on my mothers side that I dont meet often speaks to me in Japanese. This situation has started ever since I could remember. So, I could consider that I am expose to three language, mandarin, English, and Taiwanese all together, plus a little Japanese. (Though I could hardly speak them) but I think I might consider myself as a balanced bilingual of English and Mandarin, because I could speak and listen this two language fluently and express myself without problem at all. Or, maybe some semibilingual also, because I have to think of what Im trying to express before I could blurt out fluently. Japanese Well I could only express in simple words. Even so, there is a big problem that I find as I browse through the book, the mother tongue. Which one should be my first language? Because its just abit to complicated for me to decide. But since I speak with my parent mostly in mandarin, then it should be considered mandarin. Also, most of the time when I was talking to my friends when they understands both mandarin and English, we often end up communicating with mixed languages. Ex. A sentence that contains a few words of mandarin and the rest English; which sounds a little funny but were just too used to it. Personally I think Im pretty lucking to grow up in this kind of environment because I grow up learning English and mandarin so easily, there isnt really a ha...