It starts on the airplane, before we’ve even taken off. A quiet Dobrý den from the cabin crew, Lidové noviny to read. Bilingual signs on the back of each seat: Pokud sedíte, pripoutejte se. Fasten seatbelts while seated. A thrill, and kind of an amusing novelty, to see and hear this language used – in public! My language, represented in our house only by me, is now used as a means of communicating actual information by actual people.

It continues when we land: signs, advertisements, billboards, all in my language, the one that is close to my soul and that I never hear anybody but me speak. A businessman on his cell phone. Two friends at the airport coffeeshop. The radio in the taxi on the way home as I process the reality that yes, I am here, they are really using this language, it is not a dream.

And a small moment in between, just when we touch down onto Czech soil. They play Má vlast over the speaker system and I release a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I am here.

Over the next few days I adjust to being back. I eat mainly rohlíky and drink iced green tea. I get my tongue reacquainted with speaking Czech to everyone I meet, not just my husband . I hear the rise and fall (or monotone!) of Czechs speaking Czech and think to myself, Yes! That’s it, that’s how it is supposed to sound. In my life in England there is no one to speak Czech to me. No Czech to hear but my own. I speak it to my husband, but he answers me in Slovak, his language. I have a couple of friends I speak Czech with, but they are Slovak, too. When I hear the rhythms and intonations of Czech all around me, I can feel my own language improve a bit, picking itself up and brushing itself off from where it had slipped. Reading books and talking to my husband doesn’t keep it from slipping, a bit.

I have to search for a word here and there. It doesn’t come without effort, at first. Just like I had difficulty in England in the beginning. It wasn’t natural to speak so much English. I didn’t know how to explain things quite right in English. I couldn’t find the podložky I needed for my baby in England, and I couldn’t explain what they were in English. We did without. And I learned how to speak English to strangers again, after being my language of home and friends and vulnerability for so long.

I still have to search for a word here and there in English. In Czech, too, a bit more often than in English. Because Czech, this language that is close to my heart, it is not native. The lines almost begin to blur for me, between what is native and what is natural, between the world in which I was born and the world I chose, but no, I did not learn Czech smiling at my mother’s knee. I learned it twenty years later, with charts and lists and cast-iron determination.

Doesn’t it bother you, my mother asked on the night before my wedding, that for the rest of your life the first word out of your mouth will be English and the first word out of his will be something else? No, I said, and didn’t know how to explain why. But now I can say with authority, the first word out of either of our mouths has a good chance of being in any of our three languages. Often followed by a word in one of the other three. And that does not bother me.

But how can I explain that to my mother, who taught me to talk, or to any other person who hasn’t experienced it, that it isn’t that simple? It isn’t a matter of speaking THIS language automatically and THIS language only with an effort. They both flow effortlessly sometimes, and they both take concentration at others. I forget words and use circumlocutions like “baby pushy thing” when what I really want to say is kocárek. How do I explain what it means not to translate but to really think in another language, or sometimes to think in both languages at once and then laugh at the word salad that occasionally results? How can I explain to my mother, who taught me to talk and how to be, that yes, things are different here, but that I think of them as normal? That it takes an adjustment to return here, but not to the extent she might imagine? I have to learn this culture just like I have to learn this language, but both the culture and the language fit me. Some things I still work to understand, but in some ways I was Czech before I knew what it meant to be Czech. (A country where they only ask “How are you?” when they really mean it?? Hand me a passport application, baby!)

I often hear that your native language is the one that speaks most to your soul, that is closest to your heart, and that any foreign language is only put on like a coat. But as the lines blur and native and natural change and shift, I have to wonder who comes up with descriptions like that (and how well they speak their foreign language). How is it possible that a language that is not native can be in my soul and in my heart? Don’t you see? Czech is close to my soul because it is not native. I pulled it to me, so that I could understand it. I pulled it into my soul and my heart and I refused to let go. I made it a part of myself because my passion was to understand. I don’t wear Czech like a coat, not any more; I wear it like my skin, and like my skin, I could never take it off completely. No more than I could shrug off English and leave it in the hands of a porter. They are both a part of me, inside me and all around me, and they both inform who I am in my heart. Sometimes one is dominant, sometimes the other; my vocabulary in each is a little different; but both are me.

I think I can begin to understand my husband when he says English is a part of me; I don’t differentiate. I wanted to be sure, before I married him, that I understood his native language, because what if he was different? What if I didn’t know him in Slovak? By the time we married I was able to understand Slovak well enough to know that he wasn’t different in English. He is himself, in English and in Slovak. He is equally sarcastic and full of attitude in both languages. As, now, am I. I can’t say that I am different in either language, either, because I am me in both. Neither one is the authentic me that must then be translated into the other language. Czech is a part of me and the time I spent away from Czech Republic is time spent in exile.

It might sound like there is no part of Czech life I don’t adore, but that’s actually not quite true. There are still things I struggle to understand (tea for babies? Seriously?) and some I simply refuse to get on board with (tea for babies, and any mention of a pruvan…). In my process of becoming Czech I do not entirely leave behind my English identity – although I definitely leave behind large chunks of what is “American”. But I do hold something back from Czech, something small and stubborn that pipes up saying, “But we are Slovak!” With my husband and daughter I don’t use the Czech vocative, the way of calling someone’s name with a different ending. It doesn’t exist in Slovak and to my husband it is strange and foreign, so I call him and our daughter in Slovak instead. It is a small thing, but it reminds us: We are Slovaks and Americans; we are not bound by your rules.

People often exclaim at how amazing it is that I speak Czech even though I am married to a Slovak – how do I keep the languages separate? The truth is I keep them mostly separate, but my Czech is influenced by Slovak in my word choice, my intonations, even the food I eat (we eat a lot of bryndza in our house…). It isn’t much, but it’s enough that people occasionally think I’m originally Slovak. That makes me pretty proud.

Sorting out the Czech from the Slovak in my heart would be even more difficult than disentangling the English from the Czech. Either is an impossible task and, in the end, not particularly a worthwhile goal. I am Czech and I am English. To look at my family, you would not say which of us is from which country. I go out wearing a sweatshirt that says Ceská republika and my husband’s says OU Sooners. I ask a question in Czech and he answers in Slovak, then makes a comment in English. We have both embraced each other’s culture so fully that we could almost miss each other in the middle! I have to say I think there are worse ways to run a relationship.

Being back in this country is right in a way no other place I’ve been is right, but we will still have adjustments as we return. Not everything is perfect here and maybe we will even leave again someday. If we do, I will carry Czech close to my soul. I will leave this place with a heart both American and Czech. Even if I should never return, I can never forget this language that is as near to me, as flawed, as necessary, as my own skin. Whatever else I am or may become, look into my heart and you will see a plate of svícková and a city of one hundred spires.

Note: Certain letters of the Czech alphabet would not display correctly in WordPress, so please pardon a few letters that are missing accents.

About the Author: Melissa is an American married to a Slovak, based in Prague, Czech Republic (but temporarily living outside London, UK), raising a 2.5 year old daughter with English, Slovak and Czech. Melissa speaks English and Czech and understands Slovak, her husband speaks Slovak and English (and French, Hungarian and some Russian), and their daughter K speaks English and Slovak and will be learning Czech when they return to Prague from England later this year. You can follow their language learning and language mixing experiences at Where Going Havo?

More By Melissa:
Monolingual Reactions to a Bilingual Baby

We just recently uploaded a few articles over at ELD Strategies and wanted to share them with Multilingual Mania readers in case you might be interested. One article is about teaching idioms with second language learners, which are phrases and expressions that mean something other than the literal meaning that they seem to imply. One example of an idiom in English is “It’s raining cats and dogs”.

Idioms are an essential aspect of learning a second language and are often a component that language learners are lacking in order to attain high levels of proficiency in a second language. I can remember when I was more or less at the intermediate level of learning Spanish and one day I arrived a little late to pick up my students in the line at school. One of the parents asked me, “Se te pegaron las sábanas?”

I suddenly had an image in my mind of the sheets on my bed sticking to me or whipping in the wind and hitting me. I certainly was extremely confused, which amused many of the mothers who happened to be there at the time. I finally understood that the mother was talking about me coming late and possibly looking a little bit tired.

Over the years I have had to train myself to ask people, “What exactly does that mean?” when native speakers might have used an idiom in their speech. My latest encounter happened last week when a parent said to another parent, “Me dejó plantada”. I once again had this image in my mind that the parent was being planted into the ground like a plant. Upon further investigation I discovered that she was talking about being “stood up” or “left hanging”, which are also idioms in English.

I used to become frustrated and embarrassed when a linguistic misunderstanding occurred as a result of the use of an idiom. However, now I have learned to train myself to ask people exactly what the phrase might mean and how it is used. Now I’m at the point where a few of the trickster parents are confusing me with idioms that have double meanings with naughty connotations. Initially I was a bit frustrated with this recent occurrence, however, lately I have just decided to “go with the flow” and I’m using it as a chance to learn about those nuanced parts of language that are required for native-like proficiency.

The difficult aspect of learning about idioms is that every country and region has its own idioms. As I have come into contact with many Spanish speakers throughout Latin America, I often learn idioms from one country and someone from another country might not be familiar with a certain idiom. I’m sure that the same phenomenon occurs in the English language, with people from the UK and elsewhere using different idioms than the common idioms that are used in the United States. Sometimes when I am watching a British movie, it is almost like hearing another language!

Head on over to our article about idioms that we recently wrote, and although it is about idioms in English it can also be applied to any language that is being learned. Some additional resources for learning about idioms in a few language are:

• The Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms: 4,000 Idiomatic Expressions

• Spanish Idioms (Barron’s Foreign Language Guides: Idiom Series)

• 101 Spanish Idioms with MP3 Disc: Enrich your Spanish conversation with colorful everyday expressions (101… Language Series)

• 101 French Idioms with MP3 Disk: Enrich your French conversation with colorful everyday sayings (101… Language Series)

• 2001 German and English Idioms: 2001 Deutsche und Englische Redewendungen (Barrons Foreign Language Guides)

• 2001 Italian and English idioms (Barrons)

• 101 Japanese Idioms with MP3 Disc: Enrich your Japanese conversation with colorful everyday expressions (101… Language Series)

What are some of your favorite idioms? Have you ever had a miscommunication or misunderstanding as a result of the use of an idiom?

We are excited to announce that we are kicking off a new website project and are accepting writers who would like to participate. We are calling the project a “collaborative writing project” because we are using a collaborative compensation structure as we build the website and we’re interested in welcoming writers who wish to collaborate and network with other writers in order to enhance our writing as well as promote one another. To date 12 members have joined our collaborative writing project and we are now extending the opportunity to others who might be interested.

The topic of the website is not about multilingualism per se, but it will be a website about Latina/o issues. You definitely don’t need to be Latina/o to participate; in fact, the partnership here at Multilingual Mania is a cross-cultural mix of White and Latina partners. Now we are branching into other websites, the first including a website about Latina/o issues and welcome those who would like to participate. Additional topics will be forthcoming.

Here is how it works initially: Writers will write content (we will give more information to those of you who would like additional information). At first we will share in the ad revenue from google adsense that is generated off of the pages written by you. We are offering to all writers who join our collaborative team before November 1st a whooping percent of 75% of the ad revenue generated, while the remaining 25% will be reinvested back into the site to eventually pay bonuses to writers. After November 1st the ad sharing percentage will decrease. As of now we are slowly including investors who will be sponsoring bonuses for articles with the highest page views per month. Our eventual goal is to be able to pay varying gradations of bonuses per month for every writer, in addition to the ad revenue share that they receive.

The success of this project includes a dedicated team of writers who are working together to share resources with one another as well as promote the content written by other team members. We are seeking writers who are committed to writing at least two articles per month (with the beginning articles consisting of biographies that are not very complex in format). In addition, we are seeking team members who will network with one another and promote one another, because there is more strength in a team than in individual people. Even if you are not an extremely experienced writer, what counts to us is that you will accept feedback and also strive to improve your craft through practice.

Writers will be paid once a month through paypal (or an alternate arrangement, but paypal preferred) and once writers have earned $500 they are required to fill out a W2 form.

We have many plans to expand the collaborative to include other websites with other content. The initial project that we are working on will have all content in English and Spanish. Spanish submissions are accepted since we will have a Spanish editor and we will assist with the translation to English if necessary. All English articles submitted will be translated into Spanish. We are also accepting those who do not wish to write, but wish to translate English articles into Spanish with the same format of ad revenue sharing compensation.

All writers who wish to have their bio included with their writing may do so and a link can also be included back to a personal site or blog.

If you are interested in the project, please send an email of interest to writingcollaborative(at)gmail.com and we will send additional information.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hampton Hotels. All opinions are 100% mine.

For the past couple of months I have been having fantasies about organizing a conference for parents and bloggers who are interested in multilingualism. Every year at work I put together a huge conference for teachers, so I know that it can be expensive as well as extremely time consuming. But don’t you think that it would be great-a whole group of us who blog about multilingualism to come together to network and learn from one another? That will be one of my goals one day!

Meanwhile, Hampton Hotels currently has a Hampton Chain of Friends Sweepstakes going on where participants can enter to win a two night stay at any hotel. But not only do participants win a free stay, but they also win a free two night stay for up to 100 of their friends as well as $5, 000 to assist with taxes for the prize. In addition, they are giving away daily prizes for a two night stay for 100 lucky winners and three of their friends! What a deal!

I probably don’t even have 100 friends to take if I were to win the grand prize, but I have decided that if I were to win I would take 100 people who blog about multilingualism or are bilingual teachers. The first 100 to jump on board would dash off to somewhere like San Francisco. At the hotel we would spend tons of time networking with one another as well as participating in workshops about multilingualism. And then when we got tired of that we could even go on a couple of visits to local dual language immersion schools. Don’t you think that it would just be divine to spend two stimulating days of multilingualism with one another?!

If it sounds good to you, jump on board and enter to win! The sweepstakes is open to everyone-you don’t have to be a Hilton Honors member or have previously stayed in a Hampton hotel. If you do win, maybe you will also decide that you will invite all us multilingual lovers too! If you do, I would be happy to assist with all the planning and preparation!!

We wanted to share a number of pictures with you from a Dual Immersion kindergarten classroom. The teacher had a number of Spanish learners (i.e., English-only students who are learning in Spanish) in the classroom and she used a variety of strategies to make the Spanish instruction comprehensible to her students.

She initially developed a conceptual understanding of “cats” in Spanish, bringing in a ribbon to describe that their fur can sometimes feel smooth. She also brought in realia in the form of cat food to demonstrate what cats eat and she also sketched a variety of pictures about cats. If you look closely, you will see the ribbon and the cat food on the chart below.

After she was able to activate students’ prior knowledge about cats and her students’ background knowledge, she created a chart where she drew a pictorial of a cat, labeling the parts of the cat’s body. She also included important information around the pictorial, such as “where cats live”, “what cats eat”, “what cats are like”, and “activities of cats”:

On another day the students completed an interactive writing piece about cats, with different students using the pictorial chart to write sentences and words about the cats:

Finally, when the teacher was able to build sufficient understanding, vocabulary and language structures required to talk about cats, she then had students write about the cats in their journals. The following writing sample is from a native English-speaking Spanish learner who wrote about cats. Although the meaning of the writing is clear, you will notice (if you are familiar with Spanish) that the student demonstrates inconsistent use of subject/verb agreement and verb conjugation in Spanish–something that is typical of native English-speaking Spanish learners at the beginning stages of Spanish language development:

Do you have a picture of a strategy or your room environment that you would like to share with other bilingual teachers and/or parents who are interested in bilingual education? Please email it to multilingualmania(at)yahoo(dot)com and we would love to feature your pictures!
Using glad strategies in Spanish in a bilingual classroom. A variation of the pictorial input chart in Spanish. SLD strategies for EO students

Last week the Los Angeles Times published a controversial article about teacher effectiveness by using what they call a “value added approach” to evaluate teachers and schools who have made significant improvement in student achievement. I am not too familiar with the approach, but many educational experts and scholars have criticized the approach as being an invalid approach to educational research.

The decision to publish data of thousands of Los Angeles teachers provoked an outcry from numerous educators. And what predictably happens when someone is under attack is that they turn around and try to place blame on other people-students, parents, administrators, and politicians.

In response to the controversy, Diane Ravitch, an educational scholar and historian wrote on twitter:

Staff is not the problem. Poverty and not speaking English are problems. Hundreds of schools in poor and minority dists will close. Why?

My partner immediately tweeted the following to her:

@DianeRavitch Saying “poverty and not speaking English” are problems seems to suggest a deficit ideology and “blame the victim” mentality

@dianeravitch How about “lack of growth model accountability” and “invalid and unreliable testing for ELLs” are problems?

Of course Diane Ravitch didn’t respond because she is too busy trying to incite educators into buying her new book as well as blame Obama for all this mess, although she spent years working on the Bush payroll and had no problem with supporting the same policies that she is speaking out against now.

Today the Los Angeles Times published an additional article about the evaluation of two schools in Los Angeles. Some educators left some really disgusting comments:

I worked at a school with abnormally high test scores given what i thought was its population. It turned out this school was the closest middle school to Chinatown. I don’t like to traffic in stereotypes, but the deference between the hunger for learning was so vast between the working class Latino and the working class Asian students you would have to blind not to notice.

In gathering evidence for a reseach paper I interviewed many of my Asian and Latino students about why the Asian studnets did so startlingly well in school. Almost all the Latino students said the Asian’s did well because they were smart. The Asian’s all said they did well because they did the required work. In Latino culture “not being smart” gives you an out, in Asian culture that’s not a proper excuse, you do the work.

Culture…Culture…Culture

(misspelling in original)

Right, right. It’s their culture that causes low achievement, not the fact that they have racist teachers who reinforce the “lazy Mexican” ideology. Another teacher wrote:

Is it teachers, or is it PARENTS:

*who send their kids to school with no breakfast

*who insist on speaking a language other than English at home (even if the parent KNOWS English)
…
*who let the Spanish-speaking housekeeper (ahem, I teach at “one of those” LAUSD schools) help the kid with their homework

And yet another racist teacher wrote:

And of course my favorite is the parent who shows up for a conference and is amazed when I don’t speak Spanish!! That’s how you know things are really F@#$ed up. Then you find out they have been in the US for 20 years and don’t speak a word of English.

Often there are no books in the home and students are never taken anywhere but within a mile or so of the home. But when you visit the homes, there are two or three TV sets.

Then there are the macho, controlling latino dads who won’t let their daughters go on field trips! I feel like saying,” You’re in the US now and if you wan’t to treat your daughter like dirt, move back to the peasant country you came from.” It’s disgusting what we have allowed to happen.

(misspelling in original)

What is actually disgusting is that teachers like this receive a paycheck by teaching Spanish-speaking Latino students!

I’m not a supporter of the sensationalist “let’s publicly tar and feather teachers and schools just to sell newspapers, although we will use the guise that we’re doing it because parents deserve a right to know”. Parents aren’t stupid, and they know when their child has a good or a bad teacher.

I’m a teacher advocate and I don’t believe that any teacher or school deserves to be publicly humiliated, whether or not they are a good or a bad teacher. But I am also a student and a parent advocate and I refuse to remain quiet when there are teachers and educational scholars out there who are placing blame on students for their language, culture, parents, or socioeconomic status. The issue is much more complex than blaming language and culture, and energy would be best spent elsewhere.

Stop the blame and instead let’s all focus our efforts on demanding valid and reliable assessments and accountability systems for culturally and linguistically diverse students.

When you search for multilingualism or bilingual education online, many of the websites that appear in search engine results sometimes are not of very good quality or they are English-only/anti-bilingual advocacy sites. It’s important that we use the internet to our advantage in order to promote sites with quality and accurate content about multilingualism and multilingual/bilingual education.

Many of us use twitter and facebook, but I’ve also received success with site visits from other social media networks, most notably reddit.com. I initially started posting (in the linguistics group) some blog posts that I had been reading throughout the bilingual blogosphere, However, I found some group members to be a tad bit too clique-ish and downright rude for my taste.

I decided to just start my own page about bilingualism. I completely forgot about it until just recently, and I only have one other reader besides myself. I would really like to build up the group with people who are interested in bilingualism and create a space where people can link to their own blogs and also promote the content of others.

This is how it works:

• Create an account.
• Once you have created an account, visit the bilingualism page and click on the green button that says “Front page”. This will add the bilingualism group to your reddit strip up at the top of the page.
• When you have a chance, you can click on the “My Reddits” strip in the upper left hand corner. When you hit “edit”, you can see all of the reddit groups that are on the top strip of your page. You can click on + Front page to add it to your strip, or – Front page to delet it. The top strip basically signifies the groups that you belong to. Once you have removed the reddit groups that you don’t want to belong to, you can search reddit and add more if you would like. Or, you can just belong to our bilingualism group!
• When you find something about bilingualism online that you would like to share with other members of the group, you click on the “Submit a link” part of the page and include the link as well as the title. This will upload the article to the bilingualism group or other members to see.
• If you do not have any articles to upload, you can visit the page and read the uploaded articles. For the links that you like, you will click on the arrow that points up and you will click on the arrow that points down if you do not like something. Articles will move up in popularity the more votes that they receive and sometimes articles can make it to the front page of the reddit network, which results in a huge amount of site visits for bilingual bloggers who would like to increase their readership! You  can also leave comments on any of the links and have conversations with other members.
• If you have any articles that you would like to upload, you can always leave them in our comments section here, and I will upload them for you.
• The group currently only has two members, and I have only uploaded the following articles. I will be uploading more of your articles soon, so if you have one that you would like to be uploaded please let me know. Once a week we will be uploading a widget where you can vote through the widget, provided that you have already signed up for the group:

Initially it seems confusing, but after a while you will get the hang of it and it is a great source of online communities who link to information that you are specifically interested in. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave comments here or email me at multilingualmania(at)yahoo.com. If you are trying to promote your own blog, this is a social media network that you really need to use!!

I hope you join! If we can build readership of the bilingualism group, we will better be able to spread accurate information about bilingualism and multilingualism in the online world!!

Scholars estimate that as many as one of two endangered languages become extinct every couple of weeks throughout the world. K. David Harrison from the Living Tongues Institute states:

When a community loses its language, they really lose their history. They lose their connection to the past. They lose all the wisdom and knowledge that has been accumulated through the centuries about how to live in a sustainable manner on this planet.

As a result of language loss, many Native American communities have instituted language immersion programs and other forms of language revitalization efforts. The Cherokee Nation has instituted Cherokee total immersion programs in order to revitalize their language and pass it on to future generations:

You can also hear more about Doris McLemore in the following video, who at the age of 83 is the last fluent speaker of the Wichita language and is hoping to record the language for future generations.The sound quality in the video initially isn’t very good, but it improves at the video progresses:

Last Voice from Travis Heying on Vimeo.

Related Topics:
Our Spirits Don’t Speak English

Cuando me dedicaba a buscar trabajo en México, mi lado cínico se regocijaba al llegar a la pregunta del porcentaje de inglés que hablo. Y sigo pensando que la idea de preguntar cuántas palabras de cada cien puedo decir, leer o entender en cualquier idioma, es bastante ingenua. ¿Puede alguien objetivamente contestar esa pregunta? O más bien, ¿puede alguien esperar que alguien objetivamente conteste esa pregunta? Tal vez se trate de una técnica proyectiva que usan los entrevistadores para revelar nuestra actitud y auto concepto, como la del vaso medio lleno o medio vacío… o tal vez no.

Como diría Fernando Delgadillo: “el que ya sabe, sabe bien que no lo sabe todo y el que no sabe ni jota, ni siquiera tiene modo de enterarse qué no sabe”. Mientras algunas personas pueden verse en extremo benevolentes con su dichoso porcentaje en aras de obtener el empleo, la idea de ese valor numérico puede llegar a impactar en la vida real (la cual suele distar un poco de las entrevistas de trabajo) a mucha gente que sabe más inglés de lo que cree.

Al menos en mi natal Mexico City, el inglés se da bastante. Quien sea que haya cursado secundaria cuenta con gramática y vocabulario suficiente para sostener una conversación sencilla, esté consciente de ello o no. He visto a muchos alumnos tener momentos de esclarecimiento divino en el salón de clases, cuando todo parece tener sentido y se dan cuenta de que ya poseían el conocimiento, solo que no sabían que lo sabían.

No estoy sugiriendo que no haya métodos para conocer el nivel de inglés que sabemos o que no sean útiles al considerar cierto puesto en el trabajo. Mi intención es dirigirme a aquellos que siguen pensando que no son buenos para los idiomas, que la gramática no es lo suyo o que su pronunciación es mala. A usted que ha estudiado inglés y que más que nuevo conocimiento necesita nueva confianza en sí mismo y menos miedo a cometer errores, quiero decirle que la forma de mejorar y enriquecer su inglés es hablándolo precisamente. Practíquelo en la tienda, con sus compañeros de trabajo y con sus hijos. Vea la televisión, películas subtituladas o lea las letras de sus canciones favoritas en inglés. Si está leyendo este artículo probablemente tiene acceso a muchos recursos en Internet que pueden ayudarle, incluso un salón de chat puede ser un lugar divertido para practicar su escritura.

Aproveche el inglés que ya sabe y piense que la mayoría de la gente apreciará el que usted se esfuerce por comunicarse en un segundo idioma mucho más que el número de palabras que sea capaz de decir correctamente. ¡Anímese y descubrirá que sabe más inglés del que piensa!

Diana Dudgeon es una maestra de inglés de segundo idioma (ESL) y una traductora quien escribe acerca de sus experiencias como inmigrante mexicana en los Estados Unidos.


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Por favor no Spanglish: La aventura de ser bilingüe

When do young children become aware that people around them communicate in multiple languages? Surely they can understand multiple languages early on, but when do they realize that everything, anything can be communicated in two or more different ways?

My wife and I practice one-parent-one-language at home with our 3-year-old. My wife speaks English, while I use Hebrew. I switch to English when I speak to my wife, but I don’t have any trouble keeping it straight.. it has become somewhat second nature to me.

You can imagine my surprise when my son started translating some of the things I say to him. What gets translated, usually depends on its importance. So if Aba (“Daddy” in Hebrew) announces that we’re having ice cream after dinner, then that’s something Mommy needs to know about post haste!

Another indicator that my son is turning into a little bilingual himself, is when he hears me use a new word, he’ll ask “What Mommy call that?” Once he gets his answer, that pair of words is locked in. I’ve never had to answer this question for the same word twice.

Fruits of my labor… Except it wasn’t very difficult. Mostly fun actually!

About the Author: Davis is fluent in English and Hebrew and can hold his own in French and Turkish. In his spare time he runs BLINGuals™, which markets multilingual games for young children.