Some bilingualism resources

I thought I would highlight some of the links I'm about to add to my sidebar. Some of the sites I found while obsessively googling bilingual and trilingual child-rearing back in those pre-BabyK days were actually useful and made their way into my bookmarks. :)

Multilingual Children is one of my favorite general sites. It has a range of informative articles and a forum with some great family stories and discussion.

The Bilingual for Fun blog is not currently active I believe, but L - an Italian raising her child with English - has some more really interesting articles if you click around a bit. I've been reading through some of them this week.

This blog is a bit more technical and research- and news-oriented. It deals a lot with America and Spanish, but also discusses other languages and countries. And of course many things can be generalized to any language/country combination.

More good articles if you go here. I've only read a few so far.

Or then there is this site that I have only found just this minute so will be reading through in the near future.

I've also put up several individual blogs that I really like for your browsing pleasure:

Sarah is raising her son Griffin with non-native French in America. As a former French teacher she has lots of information on language learning and bilingual upbringing of children. I love the profiles she posts of multilingual families and their circumstances, what works for them, etc.

Eve is an American raising two French-speaking children with her French husband in America. She also has a great list of resources as well as valuable insights (to me) as a mother of older children.

Emi is a Japanese mom married to a Chinese dad raising a trilingual, tricultural son in Hawaii. I find her descriptions of her 2-year-old son learning to read Japanese and English to be particularly interesting. I've also gotten some cool activity ideas from her.

Sarah is a British mother raising an English-Italian son in Italy with her Italian husband. I just started reading her recently, but she is pretty funny. And spot on. My favorite so far was this guest post she wrote about realizing your child's cultural outlook is completely different from yours. Being seen as Other, the Foreigner, by your own child. I laughed, I cried. I think about this topic sometimes, as the Foreign Mother in our long-term family plan. Check it out.

L is an American married to a Japanese dad raising kids in Tokyo. Her thoughts/experiences on culture shock and reverse culture shock are pretty interesting, if you go back through her archives. Not to mention the cultural differences and misunderstandings between Japan and America.

This blog is by a German mom married to an American, trying to convince her children to speak German while living in America. I like reading about what works for her and what doesn't, since I know I may face a similar situation later myself.

Clo is an Italian mother married to a Belgian father, who speak English together between the parents, living in France. Check out that family language diagram! Her transcripts of family conversations are great.

Here is another German married to American, living in UK, with thoughts on intercultural relationships in general as well as raising children. I liked the one about in-laws...

Jan and Souad are German and Algerian (Arabic and French) raising their family in UK. They also have a pretty sweet family language diagram. Both parents blog so it's great to get both perspectives.

Reb is raising an American-French family in France. Reading about her family I can see what my own might be like in a couple of years. Also, her baby is cute.

I'll try to do a post eventually linking to some specific articles on various topics that I thought were particularly useful. I may make it a weekly thing. Happy reading!