MSI Press Blog

  High School German My German study started in high school, my junior year. I transferred schools in order to get a third language, having already studied two years of Latin and a year of French, the latter of which at that time in history I could study at any high school in Maine or New Hampshire (and I did take two more years at the new school). My two years of German differed in the extreme. The first year was taught be a proficiency-oriented teacher—before communicative orientations toward language teaching had taken hold. Young and excited about German culture, she had spent the previous year in Germany and did her best to transfer her enthusiasm and experiences to us. We learned songs that I remember to this day. I think we learned some grammar, too, but I don’t remember that part. German II was taught by my 8 th grade English teacher, a stickler for grammar—and I bless him to this day. All those diagramming of sentences in English class have stood me in good stead for unde...

My sophomore year in high school, the year I began studying French, our world history teacher assigned major reports. We had a choice of topic, and, from the list, I chose Babel. Even in high school, I was already fascinated with languages. The topic of Babel took me to the topic of what was the original language of humans. Was there an inherent language common to all? That led me to ask, can there be a language common to all in the present day? And that led me to Esperanto.   Babel: The Turning Point in Human Speech Before Babel, people are said to have shared one common language—a unified system of communication that allowed effortless understanding and cooperation. In that world, words carried no borders; speech flowed freely across generations and regions. Humanity’s linguistic unity mirrored its collective ambition: to build, to create, to reach heaven itself. Then came Babel, the moment of linguistic divergence. According to the story, human pride in building the great tower...

  The Textile Mill During high school, I worked summers in a textile mill in Gonic, NH. I started out as a burler (pulling knots out of freshly woven wool fabric) in the sewing room, where my grandmother and aunt were sewers (filling in the holes that the burlers made). My grandmother, aunt, and I were the only native speakers of English in that sewing room of 21 workers. The conversations during the day were lively, helping the time to pass more interestingly while mechanically sewing up holes practical reinforcement—and in a mixture of mostly New England French, some English (essentially any unbroken and continuous English mainly between my grandmother and aunt whose sewing positions were side by side), and a fair about of French-English blend typical of what happens in areas where two languages dominate. The comment that has stayed with me for more than 60 years now is that made by the women sitting in the position on my life, who was complaining that things were falling a...

  Being polylingual is both a gift and a complexity. With twenty languages in active or passive use, my brain has become a vast library—rich, layered, and sometimes slow to navigate.  When I reach for a word, I’m not just choosing the right term; I’m choosing the right language. This internal sorting process can create brief hesitation, especially when switching contexts or speaking spontaneously -- or when another language has a "better" word for what I want to say than the language I am speaking.  It’s not confusion—it’s competition. Each language offers its own nuance, its own rhythm, and my brain weighs those options before committing. Studies show that bilinguals and polylinguals often experience this lexical competition, but they also demonstrate stronger executive function: better task-switching, sharper inhibition, and more flexible thinking.  For learners, this means that acquiring multiple languages doesn’t dilute fluency—it deepens it. The occasional pause...