By Livia Dewaele

Being trilingual from birth definitely has advantages, I thought, as I received my results (A*) for my French IGCSE, sat two years early. My entire class at Palmers Green High School (London) is in agreement – they have all at one point told me and the other native French speaker in the class that they wished their parents had spoken French to them as a young child (French being the compulsory language at GCSE). I agree with them, of course.  I’m not the only multilingual, four other girls combine English with Chinese, Turkish, Gujurati and Spanish.

Multilingualism is not just handy at school. Travelling last week on the Eurostar, my dad, who is a diabetic, had a hypoglycemia (a blood sugar low), and fell into a coma as we were going through security at the Bruxelles midi terminal. Click here to read more…