English > Cantonese >> Russian > Mandarin >>> Spanish > Swedish = Italian. That's where my command of languages is at right now.
My mother tongue is Cantonese. This is the first language I was exposed to and the first language I began speaking. From preschool onwards, English - slowly but surely - outcompeted Cantonese for dominance over my thoughts. I am still perfectly able to understand Cantonese, but stringing together words using complicated sentence structure requires a certain fluidity that I am no longer able to replicate. Thus, although Cantonese is my mother tongue- English is undoubtedly my native language.
The third language I picked up was Spanish. I spent two years in Spanish in high school. Unfortunately, because school mainly focuses on grammar, grammar, grammar, I didn't really retain much in the sense of holding conversations with other Spanish speakers.
My fourth language is Russian. I've been seriously spending time on it for about nine months now. Subsequently, I would say that Russian is both more comfortable to me than Spanish and also, speaking-wise, more comfortable to me than even Mandarin Chinese, the sibling of Cantonese.
Aside from those four- I've also planted foundations for Swedish and Italian, though I am currently still nowhere close to being conversational.
The most common question I get asked is, "What's the point of learning all those languages!?" To which, if I were to truthfully answer- there is no point. I just genuinely find it interesting.
However, I usually go on the defensive to protect my precious hobby from being dismissed as "a waste of time." Note that, though I am bypassing the conventional "gain a better appreciation of other cultures," "increase number of marketable skills", "improve memory", etc. and going straight to the unusual, it doesn't mean that the well-established benefits of learning foreign languages are less important.
It makes for productive procrastination. If I'm sick of doing my organic chemistry homework- I'll pop over to my Duolingo app and practice a Swedish module for five minutes, then go right back into doing my homework. How many people can say that they waste time learning new languages? It is also far easier to peel myself away from Duolingo to go back to my homework than it is from watching "Bones" reruns.
It has made me a better multi-tasker. According to a study from Penn State University, bilinguals can outperform monolinguals in abilities that involve prioritizing tasks and ignoring information that is distracting or irrelevant. This is related to a bilingual's ease with flipping between languages or combining two languages.
Googling words in different languages broadens my perspective. A good example of this is cuisine. Looking up the recipe "dumpling" is not the same as looking up Russian "пелмени" (pelmeni) or Chinese "水餃" (shuijiao).** Current events are also a good example. Try googling Swedish "Trump amerika" and compare with American news sources.
It makes a dull lecture seem more interesting. I had difficulty paying attention in a not- particularly-engaging lecture last semester. I convinced myself to learn, or at least train my eyeballs on the lecture slides, by learning the Russian vocabulary for "magnetic resonance imaging" and "positron emission tomography".
Overall, speaking so many languages has made me much more confident. It is very encouraging to be able to see such a direct correlation between the amount of work you put into something and outcome. For other tasks such as exercise, the relationship between work and outcome is seldom as direct. I went from watching a "Eralash!" episode seven months ago and not understanding anything, to watching the same episode now and not needing English subtitles. It is such a powerful feeling, to know that I can learn whatever I want to as long as I have the resolve to stick with it.
Wasting my time? How could anyone say such a thing?
**Crediting my roommate Tiffany Chu for this idea.
