A mother from Barcelona spoke to me the other day about her 8-year-old daughter’s recent conversation with a friend. They had several languages in common, and the suggested that they stopped speaking Hungarian together. She said it wasn’t important as they only went to Hungary in the summer anyway. How should we determine the value…
When we think of music, we automatically assume that it conveys universal emotions. However, this perception is wrong since our ear has a certain taste, just like we prefer different foods. Everyone has a preference for the music they heard in their childhood, in the same way, as, for example, an octopus salad evokes the…
Flavours are hard for the tongue to forget. Traditional dishes survive a long time even in a diaspora, or even in scattered families, for centuries or more. However, unfortunately, the spoken language does not have this quality and is much, much more fragile than family recipes that get passed down through generations. So much so…
In our family, swearing was more of a male preserve, and I was surprised that when I visited home as an adult, my aging mother used expressions that I had never heard her use as a child. Perhaps this was because she lived alone, or perhaps it was because her environment had changed, as it…
If you live in a country whose official language differs from your own, when you try to decide which language to use with your children, many different considerations will come to mind. It is perfectly legitimate for each individual to decide which language to use according to their own best judgement. Looking back, for me…