When your German friends wish you a “Guten Rutsch!”, “Einen Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!” or say “rutsch guet übere” (Swissgerman), they don’t want you to “slide” or “slip” (rutschen=to slide; (aus)rutschen= to slip). They simply wish you a smooth start into the New Year. Can’t they just […]
We all know that the best way to help our children become (and stay!) multilingual is by talking the languages we want them to become proficient in as often as we can and by providing an attractive context (with friends, family etc.). By acquiring other languages, our children […]
The conventional wisdom is that the Portuguese term saudade doesn’t have an equivalent in any other language. But according to an entry in wikipedia, there are quasy-synonyms in several languages. Saudade is… According to the Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, saudade can be described as follows (my translation): […]
This post is for this month’s Raising Multilingual Children Blogging Carnival hosted by Headoftheheard. This month’s theme is “Hidden Opportunities”. When you are multilingual and start having kids, you have to choose which language you’ll talk to your children. Linguists always recommend to talk your “mothertongue” to […]
I noticed that many expats who live in the Netherlands for several years don’t really have Dutch friends and barely accept or appreciate the Dutch way of life. It made me think about why I don’t feel the same way and about what I like about this country. […]
This is a very interesting article from Jenny Ebermann from Mindful Leadership & Intercultural Communication, which I would present you here as a very important insight into what is actually an invisible but tangible cultural and linguistic barrier and how this is perceived by someone who lives in […]
(updated in 2020) Some time ago I read an interesting article from a mum raising multilingual children in a multicultural environment. She told her multilingual mothering story in a very positive and encouraging way. I would like to encourage mothers, fathers, caregivers to not be afraid to speak […]
The Rumantsch is one of the Rhaeto-Romance varieties, and the Rhaeto-Romance is a sub family of the Romance languages spoken in Switzerland and north and north-eastern Italy. The family of the Raetho-Romance is closely related to French, Franco-Provençal, Occitan, Gallo-Italian (of the Italian regions Piemonte, Liguria, Lombardia and […]
