Multilingual Mamas

University professor, Jöelle Muhlemann, recently moved with her two adolescent sons and husband to Belgium from the United States. Her children were already trilingual, speaking French, English and Swiss German, and Jöelle talks to us about what the process of adapting to life in Belgium and learning Flemish has been like for her family. She shares some wonderful advice for anyone considering taking the big step of immigrating and helping children adapt to life in a new language and culture.

Gabriella Gómez Saxon, a proud Colombian-American and Wake Forest University student currently studying abroad in Spain, talks to us about growing up bilingual in North Carolina and attending a K-8 dual immersion school. She talks about how important it was for her to have Hispanic friends and role models from a young age, to maintain strong ties to the Hispanic community in Charlotte, and to never have her bilingualism or biculturalism questioned. Despite Gabriella’s skills and confidence, she still experiences the challenges of linguistic insecurity and not fitting neatly within labels.

In this episode of Multilingual Mamas we talk to Mavi Turner, a bilingual young adult who shares with us her experience growing up bilingual in the US. She discusses her relationship with Spanish grammar as well as how she felt visiting family in Spain at different times during her childhood and adolescence. Mavi embraces bilingualism and hopes that she can pass Spanish down to her children in the future.

En este capítulo hablamos con Javier Garrido que nació y se crió en Suiza, como muchos de los hijos de inmigrantes españoles que emigraron a diferentes países a finales de los años 60 con el objetivo de mejorar su calidad de vida. Javier nos cuenta que él nunca se llegó a sentir suizo -aunque así lo llamaban en el pueblo de sus padres cuando iba de visita en verano - a pesar de haber vivido en Suiza los primeros 15 años de su vida. También nos habla de cómo fue la experiencia de emigrar a España como adolescente y de cómo su experiencia de vida le ha ayudado en su carrera profesional como embajador de la cultura y lengua española.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This episode was recorded before Russia invaded Ukraine.Our interviewee is raising her children as Russian-Spanish bilinguals and has strong Ukrainian family ties. We hope that this episode serves to show how complex multilingualism and multiculturalism is for many people who grow up in Eastern Europe. In addition to all Ukranians at home and abroad, we also want to extend our support to all Russian expats who may be suffering discrimination during this tragic conflict.

Olga Ivanova is a multilingual mom raising her children bilingual in Russian-Spanish in Salamanca (Spain). She tells us about her unique upbringing in multiple countries of Eastern Europe and how speaking multiple languages was the norm in her family. Olga is also a Professor of Spanish Language and Linguistics at the University of Salamanca, where she teaches and conducts research surrounding the topics of bilingualism, sociolinguistics, and cognition. In addition, Olga is the founder and acting director of a non-profit organization (Asociación Buvlick) that aims to support bilingualism among Russian-Spanish bilingual families in the Salamanca area.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Amelia Tseng, a sociolinguist at the Smithsonian and American University who also grew up bilingual and bicultural in an immigrant family. She delves into the social side of multilingualism, at the individual, family, and societal levels. We discuss how different personality types, family dynamics, societal pressure, community support, pride, and socioeconomic status can affect a bilingual child’s experience, and how we, as parents, can hopefully make it a more positive one.

In this episode, we sit down with Joseph and Karina Collentine, two Spanish professors and linguists who adopted their two daughters from Guatemala. They discuss how their daughters’ proximity in age, race, and experience living in Arizona have uniquely shaped their linguistic and cultural identities.

In this episode, we interview Malwina Gudowska, a PhD student in linguistics and bilingualism, who has researched how raising bilingual children affects us mamas. We talk about the additional mom guilt, the stress of being the only input your child receives in one of her languages, and how moms may or may not be able to express their emotions clearly in the language they have chosen to speak to their children, We reference her article A mother’s tongue: The complexity of raising multilingual children several times during the interview. If you need a hug and high five, this episode is for you. You’re doing great, multilingual mamas!

After over 40 years researching bilingualism and biculturalism, publishing 10 books, founding one of the most important academic journals in bilingualism, writing a bilingualism blog for 10 years, and raising two multilingual sons, Francois Grosjean sits down to chat with us on a variety of topics from bilingualism of the Deaf, bilingualism in Europe vs. the United States, language loss, the difference between bilingualism and biculturalism, and baseball. In the episode, he references the following books:

Life as a Bilingual (2021)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/life-as-a-bilingual/D1717C0B80AB17B81471F1136CC5F9D7#fndtn-information

A Journey in Languages and Cultures (2019)

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-journey-in-languages-and-cultures-9780198754947?q=fran%C3%A7ois%20grosjean&lang=en&cc=de#

For our first episode of season 2, we sat down with Erin McKenna to talk about her experience raising three bilingual children, including a son diagnosed with both Down's Syndrome and Autism. She offers insight into the unique challenges each child faces when acquiring language and how a signing system has helped meet her family’s communication needs. She has also authored a children’s book called Laughter is my Language, available on Amazon, which emphasizes the beauty of laughter, something understood by all children, of all cultures and neurological profiles.

Here is the link to her book: Laughter is my Language

https://www.amazon.com/Laughter-Language-Erin-Flynn-McKenna/dp/1728965152