LET’S TALK
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‘On the Other Side of the Curtain’: Jean Kwok’s Bestselling Novels Reveal What It Means to Live in Other Languages
Since her debut novel, Girl in Translation (which was translated into 16 languages), Jean Kwok has earned the coveted status of international bestselling author. Her newest work, Searching for Sylvie Lee, is a Today Show Book Club pick and earned Jean another spot on the New York Times […]
Six Tips for Conversation Corps Partners
From the book America’s Bilingual Century:
Six Tips for Conversation Corps Partners
Tip No. 1: Be a learner, too
First, it helps greatly if you are learning their native language. This levels the table, away from teacher-student, and facilitates true conversations among equals. You […]
“Talking Leaves” The Cherokee Syllabary of Sequoyah
Editor’s note: Be sure to listen to our podcast on saving the Cherokee language—Episode 30 of America the Bilingual, “A New Generation of Cherokee Speakers Rises.”
When is an alphabet not an alphabet? When it is the syllabary of the Cherokee language. A Cherokee named Sequoyah invented it in […]
Jackie Kennedy’s Prowess as a Polygot
When President John F. Kennedy traveled to West Berlin on June 26, 1963, he wanted to assure the people there—who were literally walled off from the eastern portion of their city by Communist Russia—that Americans stood with them. Ever the classicist, Kennedy drew from the ancient Romans’ statement of […]
First, know that she has one of those glorious English accents (or what all of us who are not English would call an accent), which makes her a natural for the audio book narration that she does. Although U.S. born, Caroline grew up in England and studied literature at the University of Warwick (fyi for American ears: that second “w” is silent).
