Multilingual Mamas

In this episode we interviewed Anna Attal, a native English speaker who attended a dual immersion school in Spanish. She tells us about her experience learning Spanish as well as the other benefits of early exposure to other languages and cultures. Overall, she highly recommends the program and says it made her more confident, open-minded, and passionate about learning languages.

In this episode, we interview María Elena Gutiérrez, daughter of a Spanish dad and American mother, who grew up in the US, went to UT Austin, became a dual immersion teacher, and is raising two bilingual daughters. Given that our children have similar profiles, we allow ourselves to imagine that our children will be just as bilingual and confident as Maria Elena is! We discuss her dad’s quizzing methods, maintaining Spanish traditions in the US, learning to read and write, using (peninsular) Spanish in public, visiting Madrid, family language practices, teaching at a bilingual school, and so much more in this jam-packed episode.

In this episode we sit down with the two adult daughters of Spaniards, Mili and Pedro, who we interviewed in our last episode of season 3. Sofia and Paula grew up between Germany, the United States, and Hungary, and have now decided to study in the Netherlands. They reflect back on their international upbringing and how it shaped their worldview and identities. Despite having their lives uprooted several times during their adolescence, both appreciate the experiences their parents provided for them and express their desire to continue to travel and explore different countries in their future careers as an international lawyer and physician. Sofia and Paula mention the city of Maastricht, and the university there several times as a haven for international students. Learn more about it here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht

We wrap season 3 of multilingual mamas reflecting back on the diverse selection of interviews we conducted this season. This time around, we learned about testing practices in US public schools, the bilingual parenting mental load, and how raising bilingual children in a country where two languages or more share a co-official language status looks very different. As usual, in this episode we share where we are in our bilingual parenting journey, including specific information about the challenges we faced this years as well as the wins we celebrated. Make sure to listen all the way to the end of the episode, we have a little surprise in store for you.

Lina Mueller, the daughter of two Americans who was born and raised in Guatemala, discusses what it was like to grow up speaking Spanish without it being a part of her familial heritage, the confusion some express when they hear a Guatemalan accent come out of a blonde who also speaks perfect English, how her mom created an international school in Antigua, what her identity as a white, English-speaking woman has meant for her experience with bilingualism and biculturalism, and how immersion in another culture has allowed her to overcome the ethnocentrism that plagues many Americans.