I would like to welcome you all to this month’s bilingual carnival – albeit a bit late!

For newcomers, The Bilingual Carnival is a wonderful blogging event where we have the opportunity each month to take some time to share thoughts on multilingual parenting and life. I love the carnival as it allows me to discover new blogs and new ideas. It gives me food for thought, it often makes me laugh, and most importantly it always gives me a huge sense of relief as I find companionship on this incredible but often challenging lingual journey we’ve committed to.

As a total hosting newbie, I hope I can do this carnival justice. I was so inspired by all the posts I received, what a truly fantastic group of parents and writers. I’ve tried to roughly group posts thematically so apologies in advance if I don’t always get it right. A particular thanks to everyone who sent in posts on such short notice and to Letizia, the Carnival’s creator and superb organizer for her understanding. Without further ado:

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STORIES, SELF, IDENTITIES

I feel totally spoiled to get the chance to host the unveiling of  the Carnival’s new Logo! Letizia from Bilingue per Gioco, a wonderful blog that has me cursing the day I stopped practicing my Italian, reveals the logo as well as its creator’s trilingual story in  Carnival: a logo and a trilingual story.

In Freed from Identity, Non-native Bilingualism‘s Tamara opens up in this inspiring post triggered by her daughter’s continued use of English, on issues around identity, how we define ourselves and others, and how language use plays into this.

Vanessa from Language, Music and More… tells us the story of a young Japanese American girl coming to terms with her bilingual and bicultural heritage. A wonderful snapshot from an older child’s perspective in Growing up Bilingual, Misa’s story. (Also the inspiration behind my pilfered picture)

In A linguistic love story, Maria from Busy as a Bee in Paris shares the evolution and love of her languages and how who we are and how we meet play a role in the language we speak to each other.

Rea from Not So Spanish reminds us how environment and culture drive language leading to really fascinating differences between them and explaining why some languages have words for things and others just don’t. Moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches left me giggling as well as craving both maple syrup and chorizo!

Smashedpea from Intrepidly Bilingual writes in No Worse for Wear how her two children’s German not only survived but flourished while overseas visiting their English-speaking grandparents proving yet again how amazing these growing minds are let alone being able to pack off the kids to relatives.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

On BabelKid, Jan shares her Updated Family Language Diagram, which apart from a total feat in diagramming, shows us that these things change over time and now I am thinking I should probably try one of these myself but will stick to washable crayolas and scrap paper so my computer doesn’t end up out the window.

Sarah from Bringing up Baby Bilingual put me to shame in L’alphabet de Griffin with her BRILLIANT self-made alphabet books. It is a complaint I hear often -the lack of adequate resources for one of the spoken languages- and here is what, when procrastination is put aside, you can end up with. Chapeau!

In Reading matters, Sandra from Brussels Sprout writes about the joys of reading in several languages, how she and her husband divvy up the stories and the challenges of obtaining  books in all the familial languages. And all you francophiles, note the total Richard Scarry score at the bottom!

In Early literacy, bilingualism and different scripts, Steffi from Mummy do That talks about the misconception that different scripts can impede literacy but rather how exposure to them and other languages generally can foster excitement about learning. And after reading this you too will covet her nursery school.

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION & DEVELOPMENT

Verbosity‘s Solnushka in On the exploding Star writes about the fascinating evolution of language acquisition. Personally now I am wishing I had her grammatical knowledge. I can’t even tell people where my daughter is at in terms of adverbs, tenses, pronouns and amateur nouns?! She also makes a great point about the hidden value of having our MiLs around.

Belinda from Little Wool Maus shares in Starting out with Bilingualism – Early Encouragement Mausi’s discovery of her nose, head, hair, tummy and bum, etc; how without us even noticing, before they can barely speak, our wee ones are absorbing it all. And I long for the days when I used to point at my tummy and bum with joy vs trying to hide them with the right cut clothes…

In Why I’m smug about language mixing, Jen from Trilingual Trio takes us through their family’s thought process in deciding on the right balance between languages in their particular multilingual environment within an OPOL household.  I too may now embrace some mixing – I mean mixing is good right? I love mixed vegetables, mixed dog breeds and of course mixed drinks…

Melissa from Where going Havo writes about her daughter’s recent vocabulary explosion in The Language of Her Peers and how where you chose to live can affect your child’s language development and your feelings towards it in unexpected ways.

Thank you for joining us for the March Carnival. If you would like more information, to host or subscribe please click here