forums for us

One of the best parts of having a blog is being able to engage with folks around the world who have similar stories and challenges of raising children with more than one language.  But when I don't find the time to write and respond to posts, it's reassuring to visit discussion forums on other websites to ask questions and read advice.

Make yourself a nice cuppa tea and browse some of these!

The inspiring and ambitious Multilingual Living, whose forums include the following:

• Language Disorders
• Bilingual/Immersion Schools
• Sell/Buy/Trade/Wanted Materials
• Language Resources

The newly-founded nnsparents.com (Non-Native Parents), offering topics such as:

• Who told you you can't do this?
• Being a non-native speaking parent
• Baby sign language
• Forums to share vocabulary and tips for specific languages

Multilingual Children's Association, sharing stories and strategies about (among others):

• Non-Native Speakers
• Your Most Burning Questions
• Family Language Systems
• Your Ideas

(This site's forums appear to be losing momentum--most of the posts are from 2012 and earlier.)

Multilingual Family in the UK's discussion forums are divided up by region to help parents find resources (like playgroups) in their area.

The amazing SpanglishBaby invites us to their SpanglishBaby Playground discussion forums (which are only visible to members, so I can't give you an overview until I join them!).

The online bilingual dictionaries site wordreference.com, which boasts--literally--hundreds of thousands of posts in its 4+million threads.  (Each posted question is its own thread, and the site covers many languages.)  I love this site for finding translations and idioms in French, and I especially love it for the forums--native speakers weigh in on how they would say something or what an expression means to them.  I eventually joined so that I could post questions too.  Where else can you find people passionately advocating linguistic accuracy in topics as diverse as:

• Spanish-English Specialized Terminology
• French and English Grammar
• Magyar (Hungarian)
• Cultural Discussions

(It's also entertaining to look up a word, click on one of its related forum topics, then select "Next Forum" or "Previous Forum" to see a random discussion of things you never thought about!  Then click "Next Forum" again and again until an hour later you look up from your computer with glazed eyes and a sense of awe of how complex languages are.)  (Then again, I'm a word nerd.)  (And proud of it!)

Omniglot is also an excellent destination for word nerds; its forums cover languages in general, rather than specific tongues or parenting, like:

• Language Learning
• Endangered Languages and Language Revival
• Writing Systems
• Language-Related Humour

Finally, if you (or your in-laws) are not convinced of the value of raising kids with more than one language, it's worth visiting these three sites with a large readership whose posts about bilingual parenting elicited a lot of forum-like comments:

The parenting advice blog Ask Moxie 
The parenting advice website BabyCenter 
Motherlode, the New York Times' parenting blog

What am I missing?  What about discussion forums in the target language?  Please share your recommendations in the comments!


P.S.  Equally useful (or perhaps more useful, if you don't mind filling up your inbox with Other People's Posts), are these language teaching and parenting listservs you can also sign up for.