[icouldbebetter]

> True bilingualism-- learning two languages from birth-- is its own separate category of language acquisition. It's not uncommon for the learner to never quite learn either language as well as a single language learner. However the process, and learned facility for code switching, carries it's own cognitive advantages.

This is an interesting point indeed as it pertains to my experience. I believe I learned both English and Arabic from birth, however, my Arabic skills have atrophied and my English is definitely stronger but it could use some improvement. However, Levantine Arabic phonemes not found in English at all come naturally to me and when immersed in my home country I would be able to pick up vocabulary quickly and to some degree reading skills although I have very little education in that aspect.

[ineedasername]

Yep, that fits. And it's been a while since this coursework so I may be wrong, but IIRC one advantage of being multi-lingual and specifically bilingual is the ability to more easily shift to different systems of abstractions. I think the wider range of idiomatic metaphors etc. also presented a more multi-perspective mode of viewing the world. Somewhat on that topic, I can highly recommend the book "Metaphors We Live By", by George Lakoff. Truly a fantastic book & revelatory in showing just how extensively we don't* use literal language and instead rely quite heavily on metaphor.

One brief example is to say "up" when the literal is "increase". "Up" is a physical directions, yet we might say "My bank account balance keeps going up". Really, the $ number is increasing though. Metaphor is everywhere.