Spaceman: Being in between languages
When I lived in Argentina, a Spaniard told me about a friend of his whose parents were from Spain but grew up in Portugal. When the Spanish man visited Spain from Portugal, he couldn’t...
Multilingual San Francisco: You don’t have to leave your town to learn a new...
No more excuses about not having the money to go to the country of the language you want to speak. If you live in a metropolitan area, you are likely to find ethnic, cultural...
Hiding behind a multilingual mask
Being surrounded by various languages at the UN and then being forced to speak Portuguese, I had to think about what to do with my language knowledge and stop hiding.
United Nations, “It’s your world”...
Multilingual ≠ not a racist or a terrorist
I'd like to think that those who are multilingual are less likely to become racists and revert to deadly extremism because communicating with people in other languages opens one’s mind and introduces one to...
Will there be more military linguists when homosexuals can serve in the military?
As I was driving home and listening to the news on the radio about the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell", the military's ban on homosexual military service people, I realized that this may...
Why female foreign language students or speakers may not practice or show their languages
Multilingual women, where are you?
In late January, I had a Skype call with Benny Lewis for about two hours to discuss our language learning trajectories and I asked him why there were more male...
Silence is golden: my Japanese escape from multilingualism
After exiting the airport and embarking on my three-hour train and subway ride to my cousin’s apartment in Chofu, I sat on my train seat and looked around. Since leaving the airport, I had...
Is a polyglot’s brain different?
Listen to this new Subtitle podcast episode "Is a polyglot's brain different?", to find out the answer.
You'll also learn about my language-learning story and about the brains of people who speak many languages.
I did...
Making lemonade from lemons, turning the burden of being a polyglot into a skill...
I wrote a blog post for my Polyglot Project Podcast interview about why I believe it's imperative for people to learn foreign languages. It's based on my family's history leaving the former USSR.
Here it...
Being multilingual: Is my language my homeland?
(My country is the Portuguese language. Fernando Pessoa)
The idea of feeling an affinity with a language is not foreign to me given that I speak seven languages and have studied ten. In fact, my...
