How to avoid bilingual caregiver burnout
The scalpel cut into my father’s chest. As blood oozed out of the wet, pink flesh, the surgeon said to me, “Tell your Dad I’m going to cauterize his skin to prevent infection.”
My Dad,...
Why the CIA needs me and other 1st and 2nd generation immigrants for language...
I keep getting messages from the CIA on Linked In because they need 1st and 2nd generation immigrants to fill their huge need for foreign language speakers.
According to this Reuters article, U.S. spy agencies...
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...
Famous Women who speak foreign languages, Do you know of any?
As I am thinking of ways to promote women and girls learning foreign languages and showing their linguistic prowess, I compiled a list of famous and powerful women who are multilingual.
Some of them use...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
