Author: paige laevy

On any weekday morning, you’ll notice something if you stroll through the neighborhoods surrounding Winter Park, Florida. Cars parked outside a small but tidy building, parents bending down to kiss young children’s foreheads before giving them to teachers who greet them, sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in English. Babyland Bilingual Academy doesn’t make a big deal out of itself. No eye-catching billboard is present. Families that find it, however, are more likely to stay and, more significantly, to communicate. The academy is situated in an area that seems planned rather than haphazard. Inside, the arrangement embodies a philosophy that most…

Somewhere in a classroom right now, a three-year-old is effortlessly switching between two languages in the middle of a sentence without even realizing she’s doing something amazing. Her teachers are aware of it. When it’s time for pickup, her parents are silently observing through the window. It’s simple to overlook the fact that her brain is performing a function that scientists have been debating for decades. Raising a child who speaks two languages was thought to cause confusion, a sort of cognitive traffic jam, for a long time. That opinion proved to be incorrect. It was first undermined by Peal…

When most people hear the word “multilingual,” they envision someone sitting confidently at a dinner table and effortlessly switching between Mandarin and French. Despite its flattering appearance, that image is probably deceptive most of the time. Compared to any idealized version, the true multilingual meaning—what it actually describes in practice—is far messier, far more fascinating, and far more human. Since 1992, linguist Vivian Cook has maintained that most multilingual speakers fall between two extremes: someone who can order coffee or ask for directions in a foreign city, and someone who has complete native-level proficiency in multiple languages. Cook refers to…

Around the beginning of each academic year, the IT department of a school experiences a certain level of frustration. There are thousands of students, hundreds of logins, dozens of apps, and somewhere in the middle of it all is a child staring at a screen that won’t let them in. One of the biggest urban districts in Texas, San Antonio Independent School District, was familiar with that annoyance. A collaboration with ClassLink was what altered the situation, at least significantly. The name ClassLink isn’t very eye-catching. It doesn’t receive the same level of attention as larger consumer tech firms. However,…

When you enter the expansive SK Hynix campus in Icheon, which is located about 60 kilometers south of Seoul and is surrounded by low mountains and immaculately constructed rooms, you may notice something that would have seemed strange even two years ago. Mid-sentence, engineers are switching between Korean and English. In both scripts, team names appear on office displays. Additionally, some managers use English nicknames during executive meetings. It’s a minor detail, but in an organization with a deeply ingrained, hierarchical internal culture, it indicates a more significant change occurring beneath the surface. Employees in SK Hynix’s AI infrastructure team…

Between the gilded doors and the bag checks, there’s a moment when you realize something has changed. On a Friday night, you find yourself outside a synagogue in St. John’s Wood. The security is more stringent than you anticipated, with air-lock doors that resemble those found in banks rather than places of worship. A visitor from ten years ago might not recognize the location. It’s not because the structure has changed, but rather because of what it now needs to safeguard. Recently, the Liberal Jewish Synagogue started holding “trilingual Sabbath evening services” in Hebrew, English, and French. The addition of…

Some stadium moments don’t make the highlight reels. The family is trying to figure out parking at the ticket window while speaking mostly Spanish. The teenager is the one who takes out her phone and asks for a brief response regarding the time gates open. Minor League Baseball took note of those instances. Apparently, they made the decision to take action. More than 30 MiLB teams can now access a bilingual conversation platform thanks to the league’s recent partnership with Satisfi Labs, an AI-driven engagement company. It sounds like a press release at first glance. In actuality, it’s something more…

Right now, London’s stages are experiencing an almost paradoxical phenomenon. A more subdued and possibly fascinating tale is being told in French, Haitian Creole, and the kind of theatrical language that doesn’t always have a direct translation in a city where the West End continues to be one of the most commercially dominant and intensely competitive theater ecosystems in the world. Established in 2014 by the Institut für du Royaume-Uni, Cross Channel Theatre has spent the last ten years persuading British producers and audiences that modern French-language plays merit not just translation but a real stage. This seems nearly impossible…

Three-year-olds are sitting cross-legged in a circle in a classroom east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., repeating Spanish phrases about fall foliage. “Llega el otoño tras el verano,” they respond, their enthusiasm genuine and their accents distinctly American. It’s a minor, nearly unremarkable scene. However, it’s more akin to a breakthrough when considering what has been happening—or rather, what hasn’t been happening—in Black neighborhoods across this nation. There are now more than 2,000 dual-language immersion programs in the US, up from about 260 in 2000. That is a remarkable increase, the kind of development that proponents of education…

If you were to stand at a Wendy’s drive-thru in central Florida on a humid Tuesday afternoon, you would likely notice the same things: the menu board glowing against a washed-out sky, the subtle scent of frying oil coming from the speaker, and someone getting a Frosty somewhere, whether or not the weather warrants it. The voice requesting your order may not be human, at least not immediately. It can now make inquiries in Spanish. Wendy’s declared that it is testing its FreshAI system’s Spanish-language capabilities in 28 of its Florida and Ohio restaurants. The mechanism is incredibly straightforward: when…