The inner lives of famous people are always interesting, because the deeper the secrets, the more they resemble anyone else in the world with a complex life. It may not be apparent on the surface that Ben Affleck and Shakira have a whole lot in common. They both know what it’s like to be famous, to come from more fortunate circumstances, and to have an eclectic romantic record. But they also share another trait. They both have a very good Spanish vocabulary, along with a good English one. They both have fluency in both tongues, with her native tongue being Spanish and the reverse for him.
It’s not surprising, when looking at celebrities and their languages, to discover that the ones who are most well-traveled have the most languages. And it’s also not surprising to find that bilingual celebrities usually raise their children to be bilingual (at least) as well. The languages spoken by bilingual children are almost always based on some deep connection one of the parents has to a place, and that’s a potential clue to the secret of learning languages. It’s not necessarily that some have the knack and some do not, but much more dependent on necessity than most people realize. Children learn languages when it’s necessary to learn them. It’s usually connected to living in a place, where there are obvious and subtle rewards to understanding what the other children are talking about.
With all the lists of famous bilingual celebrities and their children, there are some other common threads that are clear. These threads do warrant the necessity for a good Spanish dictionary always nearby if one lives anywhere close to a Spanish-speaking country. 
Second and third languages are indeed like a passport, allowing passage into other places. What children learn very quickly is that, in a multicultural society, it’s not always necessary to travel geographically far to be somewhere else. Speaking another language from a young age does open up so many possibilities for the future. Having the opportunity to learn before the accent of one’s mother tongue is pronounced is a very valuable thing for an actor. But a language picked up at any moment will always allow amazing access into other worlds, and is not a bad thing for giving off a sense of real culture. A conversation in another language is certainly a sign of intelligence, but it also demonstrates an adaptive capacity to move just a little more freely in the world at large.
So if there really is one common denominator in the lists of famous people and languages, it’s that no one regrets knowing another one.
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Tags: bilingual, celebrities, languages