Author: paige laevy

It’s not the bright walls or the sound of kids playing during recess that catch your attention when you first enter a hallway at Weaver Elementary in Garland, Texas. It’s Mandarin. Chinese was selected as the district leaders’ immersion bet in a school district where Hispanic students make up the majority and Spanish is used in nearly every parking lot conversation. Over the years, I’ve talked to some parents who find this intriguing. Some people don’t. They simply shrug and claim that their children will require it in the future. This instinct, which is half pragmatic and half optimistic, is…

Currently being tested at a speaker box in a strip-mall parking lot, somewhere off an exit ramp, between a gas station and a check-cashing location, is the most ambitious technology of our time, the one venture capitalists insist will revolutionize every industry on Earth. And things aren’t going very well. Taco Bell had to learn this lesson the hard way. The company has seen its experiment become one of the more dependable sources of humor on TikTok since implementing voice AI at over 500 drive-throughs. There is the now-famous client who was courteously served after placing an order for eighteen…

At the core of Meta’s most ambitious AI project is a tiny irony. The messy, unplanned expanse of YouTube served as part of the training for the system that can now translate between 200 languages, including ones that professional linguists have spent decades attempting to digitize. not scholarly databases. not official documents. Just people conversing in languages that the internet has largely forgotten. No Language Left Behind, or NLLB-200 as Meta refers to it, seems more alien the more you read about it. The model works with languages like Kamba, Lao, Lingala, and Fula, which even the best commercial translation…

When you enter a room full of teenagers using an AI tutor, you notice a certain kind of silence. Something looser rather than the stillness of concentration you’d expect in a library. A girl in the back laughs and tries again after mumbling a Spanish phrase to her phone. A boy by the window, half amused, half frustrated, argues with his screen in halting Mandarin. Sitting on a desk instead of behind it, the instructor isn’t actually instructing. She is observing. It’s also difficult to ignore how at ease everyone appears to be with that setup. The marketing slogan “bilingual…

You’ll see them if you stroll down Smith Street on a weekday morning: strollers arranged like a small fleet outside P.S. 58, parents holding iced coffees while wearing exercise gear, and the occasional father still on a Zoom call. Situated in Carroll Gardens, the school offers one of the most popular French dual-immersion courses in the city. Over the last ten years, homes in its zone have added an odd new line item to their listings. Everyone knows, even though realtors don’t always express it aloud. The cost includes the school. The emergence of bilingual schools may have quietly moved…

A baby in the womb begins to pay attention to her mother’s voice at some point during the third trimester. Not only does she hear the sound of a passing bus or the dull thud of a slammed door, but she also sorts the sound waves that pass through skin and amniotic fluid into something that starts to feel meaningful. We already knew this. Up until now, we had no idea what would happen if that voice continued to switch between two languages. This question has been the focus of a team of researchers in Barcelona, and their results, which…

When a professional sits across from a mother who has raised her child in two languages and tells her to stop singing lullabies in one language while gently reprimanding her in the other, a specific type of silent harm is done. At home, speak only English. He will benefit more from it. More times than anyone has bothered to count, that discussion has taken place in clinics and school offices across the United States. It was also regarded as sound clinical advice for a very long time. It wasn’t. It’s still not. And for years, scientists have been stating this…

Anyone who has sat in a global boardroom has undoubtedly experienced the moment when the atmosphere changes. Someone changes their language. They are proficient in the language, not for translation. The energy shifts. The discussion becomes more in-depth. The walls slightly collapse. It’s possible that no leadership workshop or PowerPoint presentation has ever had the same impact. In some parts of business culture, the notion that being multilingual improves an executive’s performance is still viewed with some skepticism. People say that vision is the essence of leadership. about making decisions. about perusing a space. And it’s accurate. However, reading a…

Every Sunday morning, an odd and subtly fascinating event takes place at a small Pentecostal church on Johannesburg’s south side. The members of the congregation arrive speaking Zulu, Sotho, and a little English—the common tongues used in their daily lives, at work, and during disagreements with neighbors. Then the service starts, and at some point during the worship, the room is filled with a different sound. syllables without a known map. voices that seem to be aiming for something that is slightly beyond the rules of everyday existence. Sitting in such a location makes it difficult to ignore how the…

Every foreign earnings call has a moment when an executive moves into a quieter register, typically around the fifteen-minute mark. The script that was prepared has been delivered. The CFO has rattled through the figures. And now a CEO from Frankfurt or Seoul is responding to questions from analysts in a way that seems a little strange. Not exactly dishonest. simply textured. layered. This type of language can cost an investor actual money because of the discrepancy between what is stated and what is intended. For many years, it took a unique combination of native language proficiency, financial fluency, and…