It's been almost a year since I last published an episode, but today we are back and ready to relaunch The Future is Bilingual Podcast!

This podcast is for everyone interested in languages and in making the future more multilingual, multicultural, diverse and inclusive.

If you would like to be a guest, please reach out to me at tfibpodcast@gmail.com or contact me via my website https://thefutureisbilingual.wordpress.com/.

You can follow me on Instagram @thefutureisbilingual and @arabicwordbyword

Today's podcast guest is Urmi, a polyglot who speaks 4.5 languages (I love this description!) She grew up in Italy speaking both Italian and Bengali as her first languages. She currently resides in Montréal, the largest city in the French-speaking Canadian province of Québec. She tells us about living and working in a bilingual city and how they know which language to use with clients at work. We discuss how Urmi learned all 4.5 languages and how she continues to maintain them while also working on her newest one (Spanish). Urmi has a YouTube channel where she shares her knowledge about finances, public speaking, language learning and more. Be sure to follow her there and on her other platforms. And don't miss the end of the episode where she tests my Italian and teaches us a useful Bengali phrase ;)

Follow Urmi:

Her Blog - https://www.myways.ca/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/urmamio/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@urmihossain

French YouTube resources:

Piece of French - https://www.youtube.com/@pieceoffrench

French mornings with Elisa - https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchmorningswithElisa

Ma prof de français - https://www.youtube.com/@maprofdefrancais

Spanish YouTube resources:

Spanish with Vincente - https://www.youtube.com/@SpanishwithVicente

Spanish After Hours - https://www.youtube.com/@spanishafterhours

Suzy is an Armenian-American EFL (English as a foreign language) instructor, multilingual poet and mom raising two young multilingual children. She grew up bilingually and much of her poetry focuses on the immigrant experience, especially for children of immigrants like herself. She shares with us her journey learning her various languages, how she met her French husband, and how they are raising their two children to be trilingual in Armenian, French and English. Suzy and Heather, who both teach English to foreigners in the U.S., agree that their experiences living abroad in France help them better relate to their students and to their struggles learning English while living and working in the U.S. They also discuss how important it is to learn about the culture as well as the language and grammar if we want to become proficient speakers. Suzy grew up in L.A. which has many dual-language programs and she is happy her son will be attending one and gaining exposure to a fourth language through school.

To follow Suzy and her work:

Instagram

Linktree

Other resources mentioned during the episode:

Poetry Unbound

Armenian YouTube Channel

Armenian workbooks

French YouTube Channel

Today's interview is with Tanner, a college student majoring in music business and minoring in Japanese. We talk a lot about Japan and Japanese culture, but first we discuss the other languages she has studied and what got her interested in Japanese. We touch on how her classes are taught using a flipped classroom model, which Heather also uses when teaching with Freestyle Languages. Tanner shares her experiences, tips and interests related to learning Japanese but also dabbling in Mandarin Chinese and Korean while Heather shares some travel stories of when she visited Japan with the high school she taught for.

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If you enjoy this podcast, please do one (or more!) of the following:

- follow it wherever you listen

- follow me on Instagram ⁠@thefutureisbilingual⁠

- share it with a friend and on your social media

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Today's interview is with Maria Twena, a second-generation Latina, a bilingual children’s book author, and the creator of "MariVi: The Master Navigator". Maria tells us about what it was like growing up and straddling not only two languages but also two cultures and two opposing worldviews, one collectivist and one individualist. She only realized as an adult how challenging her experiences had been and that many bicultural children share these same experiences. She created her book series "MariVi" because she didn't see herself depicted in the general media nor in the Spanish-language media. She strongly felt the need to start a conversation about the experiences bicultural children have and her books and animated TV show do just that. She's embarking on no small feat. She plans to create a massive resource of 18 books spanning 6 years of schooling (from 1st to 6th grade, 3 books per school year) showing all the different aspects of growing up biculturally and bilingually.

Her first two books are out and available on Amazon: ⁠School Crossing (Book 1)⁠ & ⁠Weekend Ways⁠, and the 1st season of MariVi the animated TV series is available exclusively on the new free streaming platform Nuestra.TV.

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Other resources mentioned:

- Study about marketing to Hispanics: https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2007/10/17/hispanic-search-marketing-u-s-focus-global-perspective/

If you enjoy this podcast, please do one (or more!) of the following:

- follow it

- follow me on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thefutureisbilingual/)

- share it with a friend and on your social media

- take a minute to rate it

- leave a rating and review (https://ratethispodcast.com/bilingual)

- buy me a coffee (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/futurebilingual)