MSI Press Blog

  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...