I was mortified. I was an 8-year-old boy, it was my first day at Wessex Gardens primary school, in North London, and I didn't speak a word of English. That morning, my Hungarian mother handed me a salami sandwich and a note with some phrases that were supposed to help me navigate my new environment. Among them were "Can I have a glass of water?" and "Where can I find the toilet, please?"

I never ate the sandwich, and I found the bathroom on my own. But on that day in 1972, my journey into bilingualism began. At first I communicated through hand signs and drawings. Within three months, I understood most of what I heard around me. After a year, I spoke fluently with an accent that had become indistinguishable from my classmates'. I could still converse in Hungarian, but at home I used a peculiar kind of "Hunglish," an artful mishmash in which English words were woven through my Hungarian sentences. I recognize these verbal acrobatics today when I listen to Latino kids on the New York City subway.

English and Hungarian are now my two mother tongues (I studied three other languages between high school and university, but they don't even come close). I'm thankful to my parents for this amazing gift, which led me to America, where I met my wife. Being bilingual has made me more open and adaptable, I think. It would seem to follow that when you perceive reality via several languages, you can see more sides of a given situation. When I think about raising my own kids, I know I'll want them to have that kind of perspective—as well as a deep connection to their ancestral roots—as I did.

But surprisingly, many parents are nervous about going down the bilingual road. Some fear that their children will seem strange and have difficulty fitting in. Others shy away because of a widespread myth that bilingualism can lead to confusion and learning disabilities. Yet anecdotal experience and psychological research both suggest that the benefits of speaking a second or third language vastly outweigh the disadvantages.

The Benefits

Bilingual children "gain in their conceptual abilities and how they view the world," says Peggy McCardle, a linguist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, in Rockville, Maryland. "Different languages state things in different ways, reflecting the culture in which each is spoken," she adds. "The typical example is how people living in Alaska think about snow, and have so many more refined words for it than folks living in the tropics."

"In the global culture, what could be more important than knowing several languages?" asks Orville Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, who, with his Chinese-born wife, Baifang, has raised sons Sebastian and Sasha to speak three languages. The boys have interacted in Mandarin with their mother and her relatives ever since they could talk, and they were enrolled in a French lycée as soon as they hit school age. Now 13 and 14, they can switch effortlessly among English, Mandarin, and French. "They feel more confident and have an infinitely greater awareness of the world," Schell observes. "They are like skilled dancers or fine sportsmen who know that they have something of a secret power. They almost never find themselves embarrassed or fearful that they will be laughed at as they try to communicate."

Nineteen-year-old Sara Weschler of Pelham, New York, also displays a heightened comfort level with languages. The daughter of Polish international-relations expert Joanna Weschler and American writer Lawrence Weschler, she has spoken exclusively in Polish with her mother, her nannies, and her mother's relatives since early childhood. When she was younger, she even separated her stuffed animals into English and Polish speakers. "I had to translate between them, but my favorite teddy bear was, for some reason, bilingual like me," she recalls. Now, whether in a classroom or on trips abroad, she finds that language just sticks to her: In the past five years, she has picked up Spanish, French, Latin, and Swahili. "Speaking two such very different languages has made new ones much easier," she says. Her favorite website is an online etymological dictionary.

Some benefits of bi- and multilingualism lie below the surface. Language governs the way we connect to our surroundings, and each one contains its own multitude of signs and rules. In The Handbook of Child Psychology, Volume 1, the editors assert that "knowledge of language is knowledge of a nonphysical system with infinite combinatorial possibilities." And the more of these complex systems kids can wrangle, the better off they'll be.

Next Page: Research suggests that bilingual children have a cognitive advantage in today's multitasking world.