Multilingualism is not a Curse part 1

‘Multilingual societies should be regarded as an opportunity, rather than as a set of problems to solve.’ – Antonella Sorace

Having more than one language is good for lots of obvious reasons, but also some which are not so obvious. This is an episode about multilingualism: why it’s a blessing and not a curse.

You can find a transcript for this episode here.

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The contributors: 

* Antonella Sorace is Professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. She is a world leading authority on bilingualism over the lifespan.

* Kyle Bettley is a Senior Lecturer at Glasgow Clyde College, teaching British Sign Language Studies and ESOL.

* Diana Lugo López is a PhD student studying multilingualism at the University of Edinburgh.

* Eva Hanna is a PhD student who studies multilingualism at the University of Glasgow. She is also the parent of two multilingual children. She has a couple of excellent blog posts about the value of multilingualism which you can read here and here.

* Agnieszka Wodzińska is a writer. She has a zine about the experience of moving to Scotland, which is out now and available on Etsy. It’s called ‘One Of The Good Ones’. Her essay ‘When The Curtain Falls’ is going to be featured in the anthology The Bi-ble volume II: New Testimonials, which will be published by Monstrous Regiment in the summer. It’s about growing up queer in Poland.

* Paweł Poranski teaches at Polska Szkoła Glasgow.

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Antonella is the founder of Bilingualism Matters, a research centre at the University of Edinburgh which has partner branches all over Europe and the US, run by an international team of researchers. They study bilingualism and language learning, and communicate what they know to enable people to make informed decisions based on scientific evidence. You can follow them on Twitter here, and you can read about some of the research they’ve been involved in recently here and here. Look for upcoming events here.

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The social enterprise Lingo Flamingo run a programme of language classes for older people living in care homes across Scotland. Their paid-for classes for all ages help to fund the care home classes. You can sign up to learn Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, English, German or Polish with them, or you can volunteer to be a language teacher. You can follow them on Twitter here.

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