bilingual

Our little multilingual family has some exciting news! We will be moving to South America (Ecuador) in 2014! This definitely poses new challenges and exciting opportunities as a family who has multilingualism at the center of mostly everything we do (i.e., doctors visits, children’s books). We are already thinking about how our linguistic interactions will change as we establish ourselves in our new home aka the middle of the world. For example, we have considered changing our use of Spanish forRead More ...

Last week I picked up Enzo at daycare and he ran to me with arms open wide. “Mommy!”  he said. I said no, “Yo soy mama, abuela es mami.” He started to giggle and pointed his finger at me, “no tú mommy.” Only four months into daycare and Enzo’s English is flourishing. At home, sometimes we hear him playing by himself and he is playing en inglés! His Papa swears English has already become his first language. Enzo hears his otherRead More ...

My husband and I don’t speak Spanish, but we still wanted our three kids to speak it. After years of searching for a good option (babysitters, playgroups, learning groups, etc.) we finally settled on having them learn Spanish through tutoring. We searched nearby cities (our town is tiny: only 1,141 people) and tried several teachers, but we were not satisfied with the return: after long hours of driving to the lessons, our son did not progress beyond the point of basic countingRead More ...

Before having children, I fantasized how easy it would be to raise them speaking Spanish, English and even Mandarin. Although I am not a native speaker, I was confident that my Spanish skills, sheer determination, and obviously my Spanish-speaking husband would propel our household into bilingual bliss. We began by speaking to our children in (mostly) Spanish, but with both my husband and I working full-time while taking grad classes, their exposure to Spanish was limited. When we adopted myRead More ...

Last week, I shared a link to an EFE story I was interviewed for regarding the current state of the Spanish language in the United States. One of the other people interviewed is a woman who runs a language school for children here in Denver and one of her quotes caught my attention. She said: “Bilingual people must possess a certain mastery of both their languages… speaking them is not enough. Writing, reading and comprehension are integral parts of learningRead More ...