Suzanne Garcia Mateus is the proud mami of a one-plus-year old little girl whom she is ambitiously trying to raise with three languages. Her research interests as a doctoral student in bilingual and bicultural education and life experiences growing up with Mexican immigrant parents inspired her to create a blog, Interpretations of a Bilingual Life, in order to better understand the rich nuances that living with multiple languages offers.
Twitter: trilingualbaby
This summer has included a multitude of events with my busy toddler including the way she has made sense of the exposure to several languages. I have watched her transform what once sounded like babble to actual words and to no one’s surprise she includes Spanish, English, and French in her speech (though mostly Spanish). What amazes me the most is how she is incorporating English into her linguistic repertoire. I have witnessed (as many SB readers probably have) howRead More ...
I hold the following quote by the linguist, Tove Skutnab-Kangas, dear to my heart and one that is always resonating with me during my day-to-day endeavors to raise a multilingual child. Linguicism includes the “ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language.” This includes the languages we choose to teach our children and the ways we chooseRead More ...
A few months ago I let my Facebook friends know that Sabrina used three languages in one day for the first time! This, of course, was a milestone because we have been speaking entirely in Spanish to her, though she hears English daily, and is exposed to French in very contrived settings, like through read alouds and French children’s videos. Before our daughter was born, almost two years ago, we decided to attempt to raise her with three languages.Read More ...
There are two things my mother-in-law and I had decided before Sabrina was born. The first was that she would be called Oma (abuelita in German) because she very much identifies with her German roots. Her family immigrated in the late 18th century to the United States via Russia. Both her parents (Sabrina’s bisabuelos) first language was German. The second thing we had decided was that she, being the Oma or second generation German-American, would speak to her in EnglishRead More ...
I’m about to age myself, but how many of you remember watching the Strawberry Shortcake cartoons in the 80’s? Well it was those fond memories as a kid that got me all excited about reviewing the new and slightly more modern little redheaded girl that loves strawberries. What I liked about the videos was that they included familiar tales or re-enactments of other stories we all know about. For instance, Berry Brick Road, is essentially a rendition of The WizardRead More ...
Putumayo world music CD’s seem to capture, in my opinion, the best a genre of music has to offer and the Instrumental Dreamland CD is by no means an exception. One of the features I love about Putumayo’s music is that they also seem to cover several international musicians in one CD. Whether the soothing tunes help your little one get to sleep or if it’s music from the children’s Brazilian Playground which gets my bebita bobbing her head fromRead More ...
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