Welcome to Your Multilingual Journey: Our Story + What's Coming
From One Multilingual Parent to Another: Our Stories, Science, and What's Coming
Hi there,
I‘m Magda, and probably just like you, I believe that languages are real super powers that we can give to our children - they open doors, build bridges between cultures and generations, and give our children opportunities they might have never dreamed of.
My own journey with German, which I learned since age of 11 without passion or any conviction I would ever need it, has given me great job opportunities and allowed me to build a life in Switzerland that I otherwise might not have been able to have.
Our life situations might be different.
Maybe you and your partner come from different countries and you speak multiple languages at home.
Maybe you want to keep your heritage language alive to allow your child to easily communicate with grandparents and relatives in home country.
Maybe you moved countries for work and you want to make sure your child doesn‘t get behind in school due to poor language skills of your new home country.
Or maybe you want to give your child a head start and are keen to introduce a foreign language in a monolingual home early on.
In our case, it is a bit of everything.
Me and my husband come from different countries - I am Polish, he is British. We live in Switzerland, in the region where the official language is German (and people speak dialects, very different from standard German).
On top of that - partly because of my own fascination with langauges, partly because of my husband‘s inhibiting monolinguality - we decided to introduce our daughters to Mandarin through immersive classes.
No matter what your situation is, I am here to tell you there is no need to worry: science has got your back.
What might seems like overwhelm to us adults, comes natural to children. They were born to acquire languages and their brains carefully examine what is happening around them, filtering out all different speech patterns.
If done right - and doing it right is actually quite simple once you know what to do - teaching a child multiple languages at the early age is actually quite easy.
What can you expect
In the coming weeks, I'll share different aspects of multilingual parenting, including:
Actionable strategies you can implement in your daily routine
Research-backed tips that work in real family situations
Real stories from multilingual families
Solutions to common challenges
Resources and tools I've personally tested
Since this newsletter is just beginning its journey, I want to be honest - I'm still discovering what format and content will be most valuable to you.
The direction might evolve as I learn more about your needs and interests. My goal is to create content that truly helps you in your multilingual parenting journey, so your feedback will be invaluable in shaping future issues.
My hope is to create a community of like-minded parents where we can connect, exchange ideas and give each other support on our multilingual journey.
Speaking of which...
While I have pretty good idea what interests me about multilingualism, I would like to write about the topics that interest you, the readers.
It would be super helpful, if you let me know what is your own biggest concern or worry about raising children in multilingual children.
By answering you will help me create a newsletter that answers real problems rather than me rambling about whatever comes to my mind.
Thanks for reading,
Magda
P.S. If you have any topics, questions or problems that you would like me to explore and answer inside this newsletter, please do reply. I am just starting out and I am guided mostly by my own gut feeling of what is important and interesting to the readers. I will read and answer every single e-mail.