Spanish is my first language, and the reason why I was able to pick it up before English was because I was always surrounded by it. My mom only spoke Spanish to me, and we watched Spanish shows, listened to Spanish music, etc. Being surrounded by an environment where Spanish was always present, speaking Spanish came naturally. It wasn't something I needed to learn, like reading and writing in Spanish.

I agree with this point as I feel like I relate to it the most when I have to translate between Spanish and English. Speaking both languages on their own and even Spanglish, I can do perfectly fine, and it comes with ease. However, when it comes to translation for important things, I know the words and how to translate them, but sometimes I blank out because of how much I'm thinking about it. I know how to do it, but doing it can be challenging sometimes.

This sticks with me because I had an experience that connects to the quote. When I started to learn Japanese in high school, there were parts of it that I didn't enjoy. Learning Kanji was very difficult for me since we learned 15 characters every week. It felt like a lot and wasn't fun, so memorizing them was hard. As opposed to when I learned Hiragana and Katakana, there were phrases we said for each character that made it fun, thus making it easier for me to remember. Such as キ(ki) is a key. This trick helped make the learning more memorable and enjoyable, so learning two different spellings for the same alphabet didn't seem like a lot. While it wasn't easy, it made me more successful in learning the alphabet and language, thus, reading it was easier, too. Finding tricks that work for you and that you enjoy can make your language-learning experience so much more fun and interesting; it's all about trying.

I agree with this statement. I am not sure if I would consider myself a polyglot yet, but someday, I would love to be one. Being bilingual has given me so many opportunities and experiences that make me want to learn more languages. Knowing that theirs more experiences for me in life by learning more languages and, thus, culture excites me a lot and passionates me. So, even if it's just a word or two, I always want to learn more because I love languages and language learning.

I've heard this saying many times in my life. I grew up being bilingual, as my first language is Spanish, and I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. When I started to learn Japanese and Korean, many people said that I was better at learning a language because I already knew 2. Which I always felt was false as I put in a lot of time and effort to learn a new system of writing, speaking, and spelling. It felt that people discouraged my work just because I was already bilingual. Therefore, this claim that some people are better than others is one I find to be not truthful.

As someone who has friends from many different cultures and identities, the way we express ourselves in a conversation ties in with our body language and serves as a form of communication. Sometimes, I can just look at a friend and give them a look, and I'll get the same look back, knowing that we were both thinking the same thing. Or if someone says something, a person may start pointing their finger and shaking it, sort of to emphasize that the point that is being said is one that they agree with. So I agree that communication is not limited to language, sometimes our bodies can express more than words can.