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Language

  • Multilingual Language Learning Plan

    Language learning plan for a traveling child I realize that I am standing at the apex of a great experiment as I watch my one year and three month old daughter, Petra, learning Spanish and English as simultaneous first languages. Each day, she uses new words, all the time she is learning new word meanings. [...]

  • Top Languages to Learn for Travel

    What languages do you need to know to travel the world?

  • Bilingual Language Development

    A travelogue entry about the bilingual language development of a one year and three month old traveling child born to English speaking parents who has so far lived most of her life in Spanish speaking countries. SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- My daughter, Petra, has begun the long journey of language acquisition. She has [...]

  • Learning Language to Hate a Culture

    I once really loved China. I liked the people, the places, being in that crazy culture. When I first showed up I could hardly speak two words of Chinese, but, as I spent a big part of the mid 2000s in Asia based mostly in and around China, I found myself increasingly able to communicate in [...]

  • What Do You Call A Third World Country

    What do you call a third world country I typed the phrase “third world country” in a previous entry on this travelogue. I looked at what I wrote. I remembered an obtuse lesson in political correctness that I received in my college days: “There is no such thing as a third world country, there is [...]

  • Latin American Spanish Greeting

    SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- I was privy to learn a new greeting in Latin America the hard way: “Where is the mother?” a man asked me as I was walking through the streets with my baby Petra in my arms. What!?! does this guy think that I am not capable of going for a walk alone [...]

  • All the Good Girls are Taken in El Salvador

    SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador- There are hundreds of varieties of sweet breads and little pastry cookies that are popular in El Salvador. In the USA we would call this variety of baked goods coffee cakes. There are entire bakeries all over the country dedicated to pretty much only selling items from this liturgy of coffee cakes. Most of them are a little stale and hard and begged to be dipped, some of them taste good, some are a little funny looking, most have interesting names.

  • How to Travel Where You Do Not Speak the Language

    ANTIGUA, Guatemala- I know bits and scraps of many foreign languages, a couple of which I claim to know reasonably well, but even still there have been times that I have crossed a border into a new country and realized with a start that I could not speak nor understand a word of any language any person was speaking. And there has also been many times when nobody could understand a single word that I could mutter in any tongue accessible to me.

  • Haitians Speak English

    HAITI- “Do you know Dorthy?” a Haitian high school student asked me as we sat together in the back of a crowded tap tap. He then added, “Dorthy from Michigan?” just to make sure I knew which one he was talking about.

    I had to admit that I did not know Dorthy from Michigan.

    We had been talking in English for the better part of 20 minutes as waited for the pickup truck to fill with passengers. The student had a high command of the English language, which is something that I found many Haitians possess.

  • Traveling Out West Going Back East

    Traveling Back East — Americans say, “Traveling out west,” to indicate that your direction of locomotion is westerly, and “Going back east,” to indicate travel in the opposite direction. “Traveling out west, going back east.” It is automatic to use these terms. “I am from back east.” “I was out west.” ——————— Arizona, Southwest USA, [...]