Response to Sara's Blog - Bilingual people

Sara's blog was very interesting and entertaining. I was highly amused due to the fact that I could relate to the situations presented. I grew up in a boarding school, which naturally had a lot of international students, especially those from China. It always amazed me how they could speak English just as well as me, having only learnt it for several years and on top of that, speaking a whole other language perfectly. From time to time Chinese kids would speak to each other in their own language and then start laughing hysterically. I could not help but to assume they were bitching about my friends and I, but I always wandered if this was actually the case. Like in the video clip, we always used to think that when they spoke in their native language, they sounded extremely angry and I remember thinking "wow, they must hate England". Now however, thanks to this video, my uncertainties have been confirmed! 

I also have cousins living in Switzerland who speak 4 languages fluently. Apparently the only word for this is 'multilingual' (I was hoping for a cooler word) which sadly doesn't seem to justify how impressive this is. Anyway, every time we sat at dinner, they would constantly change from fluent German, to English to French and then into Italian. I found this remarkable, as I sat there thinking of the few words I could conjure up in French. 

This clip makes you realize how useful learning another language can be and also highlights the fact that us British-speaking people are extremely lazy, as everyone else speaks English, yet out foreign language skills are so poor. When we go to another country, we automatically expect them to speak perfect English, without even trying to understand or learn other counties languages.