Multilingual Mamas

In this episode we talk to Juliana Ramírez, a bilingual school psychologist and owner of a consulting firm, PERA Services, who explains everything you need to know about special education services, your rights in the US, and how bilingualism might impact your child’s assessment for services. One of our most practical, this information-packed episode is a must listen for any parents confused about educational bureaucracy or anxious about their child being misunderstood due to limited English proficiency. Even if your child hasn’t started school or will attend private school, Juliana’s information is useful to you!

Dr. Sergio Loza, professor and Director of the Spanish heritage program at the University of Oregon, discusses his experiences growing up in Arizona in the late 90s and early 2000s when English-only and other anti-immigrant legislation was being passed. He describes how he went from hating school, doubting his abilities, and envying his white classmates to valuing his bilingualism, revering his community, and leveraging his talents to improve the educational experience of future generations. Dr. Loza attributes some of this shift to important mentors, teachers, classmates, family members and to his development of Critical Language Awareness. He recommends the following readings for those wishing to understand the power of language ideologies, especially in educational settings:

Glenn Martínez (2003)

https://brill.com/view/journals/hlj/1/1/article-p44_5.xml

Jennifer Leeman (2005)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02451.x

Jennifer Leeman (2012)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280156348_Investigating_Language_Ideologies_in_Spanish_as_a_Heritage_Language

Dr. Loza’s co-authored book with Dr. Sara Beaudrie is available here:

https://www.routledge.com/Heritage-Language-Program-Direction-Research-into-Practice/Beaudrie-Loza/p/book/9781032190013

Note: Dr. Loza mentions the correction of the form haiga by some of his Spanish teachers. This form is an equivalent of haya from other Spanish varieties and has existed in parallel with haya since at least the Middle Ages across the Spanish-speaking world. The /g/ appeared in this form via a process similar to the one that led to the appearance of a /g/ in forms like vengo or traigo. Given that it frequently appears in rural varieties of Spanish, it is often stigmatized in a fashion similar to English ain’t.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Krista Byers-Heinlein, a Professor of Developmental Psychology at Concordia University, who specializes in infant development with a focus on language acquisition. She talks about her personal experiences growing up bilingual in Canada, as well as raising a bilingual child in Montréal, the largest metropolitan French-speaking area in the province of Québec. We also discuss how bilingualism researchers are able to study infants long before they’re talking and why that research is important. If you are interested in having your baby participate in one of her studies (and getting a cute T-shirt as compensation), you can find the information here: http://infantresearch.ca/welcome

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Silvia Perpiñán, a linguist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and mother of a trilingual daughter. One of the languages Silvia and her daughter speak is Catalán, the Romance language native to several regions of Spain and southern France, but which is now a minority language despite concerted revitalization and maintenance efforts. Dr. Perpiñán reflects on the difference between indigenous language maintenance and immigrant language maintenance as well as how societies can better support multilingualism and be more linguistically tolerant.

In this episode we talk to Dr. Julio Torres, professor of Spanish at UC Irvine and specialist in bilingual education and instructed heritage language acquisition. Dr. Torres, who himself grew up bilingual between Puerto Rico and the mainland US, reflects on the language ideologies he encountered in his different Spanish and English classes and how they shaped how he viewed his own multilingualism. He now trains future teachers in critical language awareness and hopes to empower future generations of bilingual children and their parents to advocate for their language varieties and educational needs. He also gives parents advice on what to expect when their child takes a class in their home language and how to work with the teacher in productive ways.

In this episode we talk with Burkel siblings Eric and Martine about their experience uprooting their lives in Southern California in the early 70s and moving to France as pre-teens. They discuss the difficulties they encountered not being able to attend public French school due to not speaking any French at all (initially), and how their adolescence in France changed their outlook of the world in a positive way despite the initial culture shock. Eric and Martine speak openly about their imperfect bilingualism and how they still tried to do everything in their power to pass their biculturalism-bilingualism on to their children with differing degrees of success.

Dr. Iulia Pittman, born and raised in a Hungarian-speaking region of Romania, has dedicated her life to learning and teaching languages. Her recent work in the United States as a German professor and linguist has shown her firsthand just how challenging it can be to raise multilingual children here. In our first episode of season 3, we sit down to talk about her about her adolescent children, her book for bilingual parents, and how to avoid some common mistakes parents make when trying to maintain a minority language.

We wrap up our second season of Multilingual Mamas reflecting, once more, on all the things we have learned from professionals and fellow parents. This has been a big year for us, going from adding members to our families to seeing our kids become more and more verbal as well as aware of their multilingual environment. Once again, we provide an update on our children’s language development and on our personal journey raising our kids multilingual. We end the episode with a sneak peek of what is to come in season 3.

In this episode, we sit down with bilingual children’s book author, Natalia Simons, a Spanish-English bilingual who grew up in England. She talks about her desire to help children going through the experiences of isolation, confusion, and alienation that can come with bilingualism and biculturalism, and to instead help them view their dual identities as their superpower. Her books, including The Spanglish Girl are available for purchase on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.com/Spanglish-Girl-Chica-Espanglish/dp/B08NWVMDQF

In this episode we tackle an issue that comes up for many multilingual or multicultural families: moving. We talk with psychiatrist Dr. Alma Moser about her work with “third-culture kids”, or children who are forming their own individual identity, different from that of both their parents and their peers. Dr. Moser discusses common challenges children face when moving and how parents can best support their children through this process.

Books referenced:

Zurer Pearson, B. (2010). Consigue que tu hijo sea billingüe. Bilingual Readers: Madrid. (English version)

https://www.amazon.com/Consigue-que-hijo-biling%C3%BCe-Spanish/dp/1518748481

SINEWS: Multilingual Therapy Blog: https://www.sinews.es/en/blog/