Lives lost in wars because GI Joe and GI Jane can’t speak foreign languages
The Time Magazine blog post: The Pentagon's Foreign-Language Frustrations shows how poorly US military personnel can actually communicate in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news is appalling, but not surprising. The military's language schools have...
Do you need musical talent to learn languages? No.
When people hear the title of my book, Language is Music, they often assume that one has to be a musician or a good singer to learn languages or that I profess that someone...
Learn Any Language By Treating it as Music
My local Patch.com (AOL local news site) just published an article, Learn Any Language By Treating it as Music, about my books. Here's the beginning of the article:
Cupertino polyglot, author, and prolific traveler Susanna...
Foreign language education: keeping us from being stupid
I agree with Michael Hofmann, author, poet and translator who wrote in the British newspaper, The Guardian, about the importance of foreign language education.
I am glad the US is not following the UK...
Language gaps: Lived vs. learned languages
There's a big difference between a learned and a lived language. It took a carrot to make that difference abundantly clear to me.
In California, I sometimes speak Portuguese in the weekly pagode group I...
TEDx: Music + language (songs) activate our brains, hearts and souls.
Alas, my TEDx talk on why we need to learn foreign languages and save endangered languages via music has been posted online.
Rediscovering Budapest and reveling in the Polyglot Conference
Have you ever felt like traveling into your past while being marveled by the present?
My trip to Budapest for the Polyglot Conference was both a trip to my past and a wonderful journey to...
Learn Spanish, English & Japanese with songs (chords, Spanish, English & Japanese lyrics included)
Do you want to learn Spanish, English or Japanese using songs but you are too lazy to ind the translation in English, lyrics in Spanish and chord notations?
It can be time consuming to dig...
Suzuki method: similar to language learning
I read The Suzuki Method He Imported Keyed a Music Revolution article from the Wall Street Journal about how music learning changed in the US once John Kendall brought the Japanese Suzuki method to...
Sweating to the future subjunctive
How do an exercise bike and a Brazilian Portuguese language book go together? Well, one keeps me from falling asleep because of the other. Problem: I like languages but I fall asleep reading grammar books.
