Multilingual Mamas

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 statu...

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 th...

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 diffe...

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...

In the season 1 finale episode, Sara and Lauren reflect back on one year of Multilingual Mamas, including their favorite moments, what they’ve learned, and how it has changed their multilingual parenting. This episode also includes an update on their children’s language development and a preview of what’s to come in season 2.

In this episode, we interview Jason Lee, whose parents, both native Korean speakers, raised him bilingual in Korean and English in the United States. Both he and his wife are second-generation speakers of Korean raising their three-year-old son to be bilingual. Research often finds that third-generation speakers of minority languages in the US tend to be English-dominant or even lose the minority...

In this episode, we interview Principal Robert Ash of Speas Global Elementary School, a public IB and Spanish-Language Dual Language Immersion School in Winston-Salem, NC. He shares with us research and personal experiences showing the numerous linguistic, academic, economic, and cultural benefits of his program for his students in addition to his thoughts on why similar programs aren't more commo...

In this episode we interview Holly Hinshelwood, an English-Spanish bilingual speech language pathologist. She discusses some of the common misconceptions about bilingual speech development that we see among parents and sometimes uninformed health care providers. Furthermore, Holly explains how the field of speech language pathology is rapidly evolving by offering testing in the patient's dominant...

In this episode Dr. Daniel J. Olson tells us about how he and his wife, non-native Spanish speakers, decided to raise their daughters bilingual English-Spanish. Dan is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Purdue University and he shares with us his expertise with codeswitching and how normal this linguistic practice is among bilingual individuals, especially young children. He also discusses the i...

In this episode we interview Dr. Zsuzsanna Fagyal, a Hungarian mom who decided to raise her children trilingual with her French spouse while living in the US. Zsuzsanna tells us about how she and her spouse decided on a family language policy to optimize trilingual language acquisition for her children, who are now adults. She argues that is is important to be flexible with your children's languag...

In this episode we interviewed Charles Uselman, a French-English bilingual child, (now adult), who tell us about his experience growing up with two languages in San Francisco, California. He discusses his personal experience attending a French school (L'Alliance) in the US and opens up about some of the difficulties he experienced transitioning into the US college system.

In this episode we interview Hannah Inzko and Tamara McLaughin, two monolingual-raised mothers who decided to send their kids to bilingual (Spanish-English) schools. They tell us about their experiences pre- and post-pandemic, and discuss the motivation and reasons that led them to make this decision.

In this episode we discuss the pros and cons of this book. Overall, this book is a good read. Andreas Braun and Tony Cline do a good job at explaining and summarizing the limited research conducted with trilingual/multilingual families and their linguistic practices. We were drawn to this book because it portrays parents and sometimes children's testimonials on their linguistic practices and attit...

In this episode we interview Silvia Tiboni-Craft, a native of Urbino (Italy), who has lived in the US for more than 10 years. She is raising her twin daughters Vittoria and Julia bilingual in Italian and English. She is in the process of starting to teach her daughters who to read in Italian and tell us all about her approach with "La scuola della mamma".

In this episode we welcome Brunella Martinelli de Medeiros Fiuza, a native of Vitória, Brazil, who now lives in Johnson City, TN. Both Brunella and her husband are trilingual, being native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, and second language speakers of English and Spanish. In this episode, we discuss the importance of connecting children’s home language to the culture, the importance of literacy...

In episode 3 of Multilingual Mamas, we interview Ariane Brearly-Smith, a British mother of 3 bilingual French-English now adult men. She tells us what it was like raising bilingual children in Europe in the 90s and how she worked hard for her children to learn, not only English, but British English. Ariane has a very interesting linguistic background and is the mother-in-law of one of the co-prese...

In episode 2 of Multilingual Mamas, we discuss monolingual and bilingual child language acquisition. Our very first guest, Dr. Tania Ionin, who is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializes in adult and child language acquisition. She walks us through the different stages of child language acquisition and tells us about her personal experience raising...

In episode 1 of Multilingual Mamas, we discuss some popular myths about bilingualism and the research behind the reality. We discuss the idea that bilingualism confuses children, that real bilinguals learned both their languages from birth, and many more. At the end, we also discuss some important terminology surrounding conversations about bilingualism such as first vs. dominant language and sequ...

In this episode, we introduce ourselves and our linguistic background. We discuss the languages we speak with our partners and children, some the strategies that we use with our children, and we end the episode explaining why we decided to create this podcast.