Your First Languages Are Like Your First Love—They Stay with You Forever

“Baby talk” is universal. Regardless of where you are in the world, people change their tone of voice when talking to babies. That higher pitch sounds more musical, with exaggerated pauses, and changes in speed. This all happens subconsciously of course, but we are laying some important groundwork in baby’s brain. 

At birth, we are capable of learning any language spoken on earth, but we very quickly lose this ability in favor of mastering the unique sounds of the language(s) we hear around us the most. 

Imagine the magic that can take place when you expose a young child to a second or third language. Suddenly their linguistic framework for understanding the world has grown in leaps and bounds. 

In My Sister Is Sleeping, you can start with a sprinkling of simple Hebrew words in a sweet story about an everyday family scene. And Does Your Dog Speak Hebrew? shows how animals in Israel and the United States “speak” different languages. 

My First Yiddish Word Book is a picture dictionary full of scenes labeled in English and Yiddish, one world shown through two parallel lenses. A language you first hear as a young child, a “mother tongue,” will always be a language of your heart and soul. Plant the seeds of a new language in your little one, and they will carry that language close to their heart for a lifetime.