On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Úna McCarthy-Fakhry, a mother of two bilingual girls currently living in Melbourne with roots shared by Australia, Ireland, France and Lebanon! Úna is also the founder of Love Your Lingo, a new endeavor that creates beautiful multilingual products to inspire your little linguist to love their language.
Episode #11 Quick Guide
On this episode, Úna discusses with us:
- A quick background about her lovely family currently living in Australia;
- The language strategies they have implemented at home and how it has switched over the years;
- How family inspired her joint decision with her husband to raise bilingual children;
- How working with letters became difficult for her bilingual daughter because letters stood for different things depending on what language they were working on;
- The inspiration for creating a tool that would help her daughter and support her multilingual needs;
- How the Little Linguist Alphabet works and the six languages it will support once it is produced: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese;
- How this alphabet can make things simpler for young multilingual children;
- How the languages and objects were developed;
- The Kickstarter campaign she is leveraging to crowd source the project;
- The different funding levels available through the Kickstarter campaign and the rewards available for backers;
- The character she developed to accompany her multilingual products, Anna, including a sneak peak to an upcoming project;
- A proud language moment she experienced with her oldest daughter while overhearing one of her conversations;
- An awkward language moment where she mistakenly called a tissue a fly!
Once we hop on the Autobahn at Bilingual Avenue, Úna shares –
- A favorite resource: Barbapapa;
- Best advice received: Take your time with your languages and do not expect too much too soon! It’s a way of life and it will not happen overnight;
- Great family habit: Being transparent with their children about which parent should be the role model for each language;
- Favorite Books: Emilie by Domitille de Pressence and The Zazoo by Judith Masini;
- Best Advice to others: Take your time, we are all experiencing the same problems and challenges.
Summary of links Úna mentioned on the show:
HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
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