In this section I write about my experience with being multilingual myself, raising multilingual children in a multicultural context and I share some linguistic musings.
Like many people who regularly use more than one language, I have some words I use in an incorrect way because the same – or similar – form of the word has a different meaning in another language I speak. Native speakers would probably not make those mistakes, […]
In the strictest sense, we all have a mother tongue as we all have only one (biological) mother. – But does this mean that the language our mother talked to us is automatically our mother tongue? What about this friend I had in school, who was adopted […]
Children love cartoons, movies, games and we all know that the vilains, the “bad guys” are not only characterized by features that make them unpleasant, but also by foreign accents. Sociolinguist Calvin Gidney started to study language patterns in animated kid’s entertainment after noticing that Mufasa had an American […]
I know that writing this will upset some of my friends, but I want to share this because it came up many many times in the last weeks. At the latest FIGT (Families In Global Transition) conference we talked about identity and sense of belonging and as we […]
Why don’t we say “amn’t I” instead of “aren’t I”? If we say “am I” why don’t we say “amn’t I”? Isn’t “aren’t I” grammatically incorrect? – I recently had a long discussion with my son about the fact that using aren’t I doesn’t seem right, at least not if we […]
Can monolingual parents have bilingual children ? What is a monolingual anyway?
This is an extended version of an answer I gave to parents who asked me for advice about their 7 yo boy turning silent. One or the biggest myths about bilingual children is that they are all like sponges and that they become fluent in no time… Fact […]
Are you raising your children abroad? Are you trying (almost) everything to transmit your cultural heritage and your mothertongue? When our children are second – or third, fourth etc – generation of international children, transmitting cultural heritage and language becomes a real challenge. If your child is first […]
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Expat Since Birth – A Life spent "abroad" 