Show Notes
Suzy is an Armenian-American EFL (English as a foreign language) instructor, multilingual poet and mom raising two young multilingual children. She grew up bilingually and much of her poetry focuses on the immigrant experience, especially for children of immigrants like herself. She shares with us her journey learning her various languages, how she met her French husband, and how they are raising their two children to be trilingual in Armenian, French and English. Suzy and Heather, who both teach English to foreigners in the U.S., agree that their experiences living abroad in France help them better relate to their students and to their struggles learning English while living and working in the U.S. They also discuss how important it is to learn about the culture as well as the language and grammar if we want to become proficient speakers. Suzy grew up in L.A. which has many dual-language programs and she is happy her son will be attending one and gaining exposure to a fourth language through school.
To follow Suzy and her work:
Linktree
Other resources mentioned during the episode:
Poetry Unbound
Armenian YouTube Channel
Armenian workbooks
French YouTube Channel
More from The Future is Bilingual
Today's interview is with Nur, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer for CopyCat Cafe, a language-learning platform that helps you pick up languages the natural way by copying what you hear. She and her French partner founded the platform, which offers a 7-day free trial, and are working on including more languages and releasing an app soon.
Today's guest, Vanessa, is a multilingual mom from Germany raising her young kids using OPOL with her Egyptian husband. She and her husband write bilingual children books about traveling to different places around the world (based on their own travels) which are available in 3 languages - German/English, German/Arabic, or Arabic/English. Vanessa starts the episode by telling us about her own journey learning various languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic) and we touch on the topic of confusing similar languages. Sometimes we don't appreciate the similarities between 2 languages until we study others. Vanessa tells us how she learned Arabic, from volunteering with refugee to studying abroad in Jordan to now being married to an Egyptian. We discuss how OPOL works in their house and how their "secret" language didn't stay secret for very long with their oldest. She opens up about some things she would like to change to make sure their children's Arabic stays strong as they get older. Listen to get the background story on why they write their bilingual kids books and what they hope people will gain from them. Vanessa purposely put interactive elements into them and even a choose-your-own-adventure into one of the latest ones. Make sure you listen to the end to hear my new favorite German word! - Follow Vanessa on Instagram @polyglotparents. - Find links all of their books & audiobooks here. - Check out and buy their books internationally on Amazon. - Listen to the Egyptian Arabic Stories for Kids Podcast Heather mentioned.
In part 2 of my interview with Dr. Ute Limacher-Riebold, we get into the details of her family's languages and how a multilingual family actually interacts on a day-to-day basis. She takes us back to when her children were little and exposed to 5 languages to the present day where they are grown adults still curious and continuing to learn new languages. It wasn't always easy and smooth sailing, though. Tune in to hear what Ute did when her twins created a secret language that no one else could understand and how she reacted when challenged by another parent at school. She also tells us about traveling as a multilingual family and the positive impact peers can have on our children's languages. To work with Ute, please visit her website Ute's International Lounge and check out her 4 different YouTube channels and free monthly workshops. Near the end of the episode, we mention Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori and Tetstu Yung, both of whom have worked with Ute on various projects also been guests on the Future is Bilingual Podcast: Ep. 35 - Raising Multilingual Readers and Writers (Yoshito) Ep. 42 - Raising 4 kids in 5 languages (Tetsu) Ep. 50 - "In Search of the Lost Words" (Yoshito)
I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with the brilliant Dr. Ute Limacher-Riebold, a renowned scholar who grew up multilingual and has been working in the field of linguistics and multilingualism for decades. This first part of our talk focuses on Ute's journey growing up multilingual in Italy with German parents and being immersed early on in many different languages and dialects. We touch on the distinction between a language and a dialect, as that is not always so clear, and the richness that dialects and regional variants bring to a language and to us as the speakers or learners. Given that much of Ute's language learning happened in an immersive or natural way, we talk about the natural approaches that she has found most helpful, such as watching TV, observing and mimicking how people speak, and picking up the culture through observation. While there are clear challenges inherent to learning a language that is very different and linguistically far from our own or the ones we speak, it can also be challenging to learn two languages that are similar with slight variations. Ute shares with us what it was like for her to learn 3 languages that are very similar, namely German, Swiss German and Dutch. We end this first part of our talk with a discussion on code-switching and language mixing and what it means for the bilingual or multilingual child and family. Is it okay? When should we be worried about it? Listen to find out.
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