english

The Mysteries of Bilingualism II on Psychology Today — Prof. François Grosjean delves into aspects of bilingualism that remain an enigma. In this case, he writes about language choice, code-switching and language interferences — topics that have been researched at the linguistic level, but not at the cognitive and neurolinguistic ones. ¡Aprender español está de moda! on El Sentinel — A look at how more and more people are realizing the importance of learning Spanish as a second language. New Fort Worth program will graduate bilingualRead More ...

Enzo has made incredible progress in English, and just when I wonder if English has replaced Spanish as his first language, Enzo surprises me by saying things like “Mama, en español por favor.” (Mama, in Spanish please.) He was referring to one of his favorite TV shows, Doc McStuffins, which I usually play for him in Spanish. I was, of course, thrilled. It was very different from a meltdown he had one morning when I switched the Doc McStuffins episodeRead More ...

I was with my children in a store last month looking at Halloween costumes.  As usual, our conversation was completely in Spanish. I noticed a mother observing our interactions, and when I smiled at her, she shared her own bilingual adventures with me. Having been born and raised in Mexico, she initially only spoke Spanish to her son. Unfortunately, when he started school, he rebelled against Spanish and refused to speak it. Sadly, this mother gave up and switched toRead More ...

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 ...

¡Dame cinco! or… ¡Chócala! When we were recording our last session of Habla Blah Blah music in Mexico, some of my previous “translating” errors became glaringly embarrassing causes for continuous chuckling at the studio. I turned to Maria (Sánchez Lozano), one of our female Spanish singers, and I said in my coolest purr, “¡dame cinco!” She, honestly, just looked at me. In perfect English, she said, “What do you mean?” It turns out that “Give me five!” doesn’t translate! TheRead More ...