21 Strange Communication Challenges Bilingual People Experience

Being bilingual, or more accurately bi-cultural, can be a confusing state of mind. You find yourself constantly choosing one or the other cultural norm depending on the situation. Sometimes, the norms are vastly different. Sometimes there are no parallels, which makes it very hard to explain.

Russian and Ukrainian are the same language, aren't they?

The politics of language and culture

My sister, Oksana, at Plast camp in NY - a typical Ukrainian American

When I was growing up in America, we did not yet have a television but we did manage to get a phone with a party line. Those old enough to remember will understand this strange phenomenon of sharing phone lines with neighbors and being able to listen in on their conversations. Except it didn't do us much good as we didn't understand a word of English.