Bilingual Blogging Carnival

Written by Natasha Goncharova | June 30 2011

At Bilingual Russian, we are happy to host the June 2011 Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism. We had a great time reviewing the submissions from multilingual parents-bloggers from around the world and learning about their experiences.

One thing that we found particularly interesting is that all of the submissions came from female bloggers . So far, we don't know of a single male blogger who writes about his experiences raising bilingual children. There is something telling about this. We tried to stay away from the gender question, but it is looming -- are fathers focused on something else while mothers are focused on bilingualism? Fathers participating in raising bilingual children -- we would love to learn from you and your experiences -- please share in the comments below. 

Another important challenge to explore is that most bloggers appear to be concerned with the technicality of languages: how much input their kids receive in each language, what method they use (OPOL -One Parent One Language or mL@H – Minority Language at Home), how their children use grammar, etc. and yet, no one brings up the question of what values they are communicatingto their children. Different cultures often have different value systems (for example, in America, individualism may be more valued than in China, and many other examples can be given) and we would be interested to learn how parents raising bilingual children approach this subject.

Onto the review of the submissions: