Daniel Tomohisa Smart is the name, born on 22 October 1987 at the Royal North Shore hospital I was. As some may already know or have figured out from my name, I am part Asian and part Coccasian (half and half to be exact). I was born with a blue bottom (a sign that I am descended from an ancient Mongolian bloodline), but some Doctors are not familiar with this and when I went for routine checkups some of those Doctors were suspecting my Mother of spanking me too hard and too often. I don't have my blue bottom anymore, typically blue bottoms go away within the first year of birth.
Anyway, enough about bottoms (for now). I was brought up in what I would say was a typical household, but thats's because that's what I experienced and I have no real idea what it is like to be brought up by some other family.
I hear many people say that children brought up in a multinational environment can learn those languages better than non-multinational children, Sure there is an advantage that we are always exposed to two different languages at any given time, but we are human and our brains work the same as any other human does. Anybody can set a mutlinational environment, anybody can keep this up for as long as they want, the only advantage comes from the fact that having two parents of differing cultures is that each parent is accustomed to those cultures and there is no need for much effort in keeping these cultural influences about.
Sometimes this doesn't work in our favour. For example, I learnt the word 'ninjin' and that word stuck with me for a while. It took many years later to realise that this word meant carrot in English and up until then I had no idea what the word carrot meant. There are many examples of words that I have learnt like this and sometimes getting my message across failed in that respect (as a child I could only speak mixed sentences, it was very difficult to construct a full sentence in either Japanese or English).
Also just because I was brought up in a multinational household is not the singular reason that I can speak both Japanese and English. It took me quite some time and effort to reach where I am now at a bi-lingual level (and of course there is always room for more improvement).
I have many friends who have been brought up in a multinational environment much like mine (half Japanese, half Australian) and the matter of fact is that most of them cannot speak fluently in both languages. Sure they can speak some, but their Japanese is that of which one would only use within their own family. If they were to speak outside of their household, they may find themselves with a red face.
This holds true with my elder brother and younger sister aswell, they cannot speak and understand as much Japanese as I do, because the amount of effort I put into my learning Japanese is much higher than that of my brother or sister. So please, next time you meet a bilinguist (or a multilinguist) don't think that they had an advantage over you and that no matter how much effort you put into it you wouldn't be able to reach the same level as them. The only advantage around is the amount of time and effort you put into what ever it is that you want.
