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...
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...
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...
Multiculturalism failed? Change your educational system!
Earlier this week, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor remarked that Germany’s attempt at multiculturalism was a total failure and that Germany’s immigrants need to learn German to integrate. I thought about the problems of...
When being multilingual is a burden
What you’re about to read may seem counter-intuitive.
Sometimes, being able to speak more than one language can be more of a burden than a benefit.
You might ask:
“How so? Isn't the ability to communicate across...
Multilingual California beaten by Rhode Island, offering trilingual school
I live in Silicon Valley where Mandarin Chinese is widely spoken by the large Taiwanese and mainland Chinese community in the area. However, the schools in Cupertino only offer Mandarin immersion programs from Kindergarten...
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...
I don’t “speak white”. Multilingualism is my identity.
For those of us who are bilingual or multilingual, our languages may shape our identities and cultural affiliations more so than race, economic status or religion.
With about 20% of children in the US population...
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”...
Mutlilingual identity: diversity of languages and ways of being
Scientific American magazine published an article about how speaking various languages can alter the personality of the speaker:
Polyglots Might Have Multiple Personalities
People take on different character traits depending on which language they are using
This...
