4-Mother Tongue

We hear it before we are born. Before the first air rushes into our tiny lungs, before the first light refracts into our blinking, baby eyes, our mother tongue is already resident, dreamlike in our waiting minds.

In America, the mother tongue for most of us is English. But for millions of us baby Americans, those comforting vibrations our mothers pour over us have other names, like Spanish or Portuguese or Mandarin.

Bilingual mothers have a choice to make. Sometimes they chose their own mother tongue to speak to their babies. Other times they chose their adopted language. And sometimes, looking back, they wish they had done things differently. This is a story of one of those mothers.

A shout out to America’s language teachers. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (I love their acronym ACT-Full) and its Lead with Languages campaign encourages bilingualism for all.

This episode was written by Steve Leveen, and producer Fernando Hernández who also does sound design and mixing. Our editorial consultants are Maja Thomas and Mim Harrison, research assistance from Stanford undergraduate Alma Flores-Perez.

Music and sounds in this episode by:

Zulmira by Nuno Adelaida http://freemusicarchive.org/music/NunoAdelaida/nonegiven1662/NunoAdelaida10Zulmira Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Feeling like a delicate cookie by Captive Portal http://freemusicarchive.org/music/CaptivePortal/FeelingLikeADelicateCookieSingle/01FeelingLikeADelicate_Cookie Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Bumbler by Andy G. Cohen http://freemusicarchive.org/music/AndyGCohen/ThroughTheLens/AndyGCohen-Bumbler Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Beach Party by Kevin Macleod freemusicarchive.org/music/KevinMa…er/BeachParty Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Changes include high pass EQ Filter.

Quasi Motion by Kevin Macleod Released under a Creative Commons Attribution License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ freemusicarchive.org/music/KevinMa…r/QuasiMotion

Chicle Bombita by Francisco Penilla Courtesy by the author. Whose work can be found at @francisco-penilla

Sounds: Kids Garden hose by klankbeeld http://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/211680/ This work is licensed under the Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Children City Payground by soundbyladyv http://freesound.org/people/soundbyladyv/sounds/85249/ This work is Licensed under the sampling + License

Landing in Lisbon by mollymolata http://freesound.org/people/mollymolata/sounds/190540/ This work is Licensed under the Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/