Mother Tongue Tied

Aude says: “Whether you are indeed raising a bilingual child, or are simply interested in linguistics (no need to be a “mother”), this book is a fascinating memoir and exposé of the way multilingualism works (or doesn’t). It explains how we get access to Language and languages, how we gain and lose them, and what that says about our world and society. Malwina Gudowska’s brilliant take is feminist and inclusive: after all, languages, verbal or non-verbal, are one of the easiest ways to discover something other, while also preserving (and declaring) an identity.

More than half of the world’s population can speak more than one language fluently and over a third of the population in the United Kingdom is multilingual. And yet life in multiple languages is rarely discussed publicly, and the pressure to keep heritage languages alive has become a private conflict for millions. Linguist Malwina Gudowska, herself trilingual, takes us inside that private struggle, shedding light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language. It takes one generation for a family language to die. One generation – like mother to child. ‘Mother Tongue Tied’ is about the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home; as a child of immigrants, and as a new mother.