80. You Can Finally Learn That Next Language You’ve Been Thirsting to Speak America the Bilingual · 80 - Season 6 - You Can Finally Learn That Next Language You’ve Been Thirsting to Speak If you’re a regular here at America the Bilingual, you probably know that our founder, Steve Leveen, got serious about learning Spanish about a decade ago, in midlife. In Episode 51, he gives a hilarious account of what it was like to be the oldest one (by decades) in a Spanish class at Harvard. Ever the undaunted, Steve [...]

78. Meet Ilan Stavans, a Tocqueville for our century America the Bilingual · 78 - Season 6 - Meet Ilan Stavans, a  Tocqueville for our century “The more languages you speak,” observes Ilan Stavans, who speaks several, “the more capacity you have either to experience this world as a multilayered place, or to live in multiple universes at the same time.” Ilan still remembers how, when as a youngster he and his family immigrated to New York City, “the juxtaposition of languages would become remarkable to me as an aspect [...]

76. Meet the maestro behind these new language workouts  America the Bilingual · 76 - Season 6 - Meet the maestro behind the new language gym The conventional description of someone who speaks as many languages as Akshay Swaminathan does is “polyglot.” But as you’ll quickly hear when you listen to this episode, there’s nothing conventional about how this Knight-Hennessy scholarship recipient and PD Soros fellow approaches languages. There is, however, a solid commitment to use what he’s learned about learning languages to help other adults learn, too. A LANGUAGE [...]

74. The unexpected truth about languages in America Ellis Island in New York’s harbor was the first stop in America for more than 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1954. ​Image Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g05584/ The United States leads the world in bilingualism. No kidding. Because of this, no country understands the world as well as the United States. Seriously. Ah, you may be thinking, there must be a catch. No catch—just a different way to understand the uncontested data that’s been accumulating for decades. So…how did we get here, and how [...]

72. kim potowski’s master class in heritage languages Kim Potowski, a professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has a passion for preserving heritage languages, in part by understanding how to teach speakers of these languages, which she now does. Steve sat in on one of her classes for heritage Spanish speakers. “And what an unusual Spanish class it was,” he said. “This is not your uncle's Spanish class.” He then had a second “class” with Kim, when the two of them sat down in her office to discuss [...]