Being in limbo: Difficulties of a Russian heritage language speaker going to a Russian...
The limbo land of being a heritage language speaker is one I’ve been inhabiting most of my life. It’s only recently that I’ve known the term “heritage speaker”, referring to those of us who...
Susanna Zaraysky speaking in 7 languages
I've had several requests to post a video of my speaking in all the languages I know. I've been so busy getting media attention for my books that I haven't made any of my...
Speaking your native (heritage) language despite ridicule
It’s assumed that just because I grew up speaking Russian that it was always easy for me to speak Russian. No way!
My parents’ Soviet immigrant friends liked to talk about how well their children...
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...
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...
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...
Farenheit 451 (remake): no more multilingualism
As a bibliophile and great admirer of the dystopian novel Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and the original 1966 film adaptation, I was surprised at how much I liked the 2018 film remake that...
Speaking in Tongues documentary on public television
Speaking in Tongues is a documentary about raising multilingual children. I just saw it on public television in the US and it's excellent. It shows the controversy over bilingual education and how and why families...
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”...
How languages change the psychology of multilinguals
Steve Kaufmann, of LingQ, invited Tetsu Yung and I on his podcast to discuss how we change psychologically when we speak in different languages and the politics of learning certain languages.
For years, I've felt...
