About
About the Founder
I’ve always had an unusual relationship with language.
I grew up in a monolingual Russian home and acquired English as the majority language—eventually becoming my dominant language, as so often happens to heritage speakers. As a kid, I watched foreign-language TV channels for fun and kept a notebook where I wrote down every new word I learned (after cross-referencing it with Wiktionary, of course).
Every time I discovered a new word—or a connection between the same word across different languages (hello, cognates!)—it felt like the world sharpened a little. Like I could suddenly peek behind the veil into another dimension of meaning.
By age 12, when my school finally offered foreign languages, I didn’t choose between Spanish, German, or French—I chose Spanish and French. Within three weeks of the semester starting, I jumped from beginner to intermediate classes and quickly became conversational enough that my school appointed me the lead peer tutor for both languages. By then, I also had paid weekend tutoring gigs, teaching French to children of heritage speakers.
At 16, I had maxed out my high school’s foreign-language offerings, so I enrolled at the University of Minnesota to keep going. I began learning Modern Hebrew for the first time while taking classes in astronomy, statistics, biotechnology, Shakespeare, French, Spanish—and the occasional horticulture or creative writing class to satisfy gen-ed requirements. For the first time, all my nerdy interests were allowed to coexist in the cavernous lecture halls and laboratories.
That’s where I discovered linguistics.
Linguistics was the crossroads of everything I loved: science and humanities in perfect balance. The study of the human condition without the postmodernist fluff. A discipline grounded in the scientific method, pattern recognition, and data—yet still deeply, uniquely human. Discovering linguistics was a seminal moment for me. I knew I had found my calling.
My training in developmental linguistics came later, when I left the classroom and entered the real world. I conducted fieldwork with toddlers, which meant studying language not in theory, but in motion. Armed with a digital voice recorder and a cornucopia of snacks, I recruited an army of multilingual toddler test subjects (with full parental consent and supervision, of course). I recorded their spontaneous speech as they played and interacted, then went home and transcribed everything—every utterance, every sound, every pause.
I used this data to determine each child’s phase of linguistic development and identify patterns and outliers.
My favorite—and most memorable—observations always came from the multilingual cohort, especially when I saw:
- Phonetic awareness beyond 12 months (the ability to distinguish between phonemes in unfamiliar languages)
- Rule-based code switching (a hallmark of parallel language development, not confusion)
- Lexical and script awareness at the pre-literacy stage
One observation stopped me in my tracks: a toddler, unable to read, nonetheless knew that Hebrew books begin right-to-left while English books begin left-to-right. At just 16 months, he could differentiate scripts and even understand that languages follow different directional rules.
I was astounded.
And then—years later—I observed the exact same milestone in my own daughter. Sixteen months old. On the day.
What stayed with me most, though, wasn’t just the adorable test subjects. It was their parents.
Nearly 90% of parents in the multilingual cohort were worried their children were speech delayed because they weren't meeting speech milestones as quickly as their monolingual peers. In reality, their toddlers’ brains were building multiple language systems simultaneously—at breakneck speed. My job was to explain this, and to reassure them: no, your child is not delayed. No, speaking multiple languages does not confuse babies. Quite the opposite. Rich, varied auditory input is exactly what a developing brain of a young linguist craves.
And then one day, the bucket tips.
Boom. Language explosion.
Those parents shared my phone number with other parents. Soon, I found myself working as a language consultant for OPOL (One Parent One Language) families—evaluating their setups, troubleshooting concerns, and creating practical frameworks to help them reach their multilingual goals with confidence.
I graduated at age 20 with a BA in Linguistics and a minor in Speech-Language Pathology, with certified proficiency in Hebrew, French, and Spanish. I went on to teach Hebrew at several private schools while consulting OPOL families on the side, and eventually accepted a faculty role at the University of Minnesota, teaching Modern Hebrew to high-school students for college credit. I even taught a semester of Hebrew at a community college (the class was later canceled—most students wanted Biblical Hebrew, while I taught Modern). One of my favorite extracurriculars was serving as a guest speaker at nursing homes, giving PowerPoint presentations on the evolution of the Hebrew alphabet from Proto-Sinaitic to modern script.
Fast-forward a few years.
Now I’m a mom—following my own toddler around with a voice recorder, furiously transcribing every sound she makes, continuously in awe of her linguistic development in 4 different languages (Russian, English, Hebrew, Spanish).
FOR SCIENCE.
And because it’s so darn cute.
The Young Linguist books were born at the intersection of my academic training, professional experience, and everyday life as a parent. I created the resource I couldn’t find: a developmentally appropriate, scientifically grounded way to give babies meaningful exposure to multiple languages—without pressure, gimmicks, or fear.
I love helping parents feel calm, confident, and excited as they raise the next generation of young linguists.
Every child is a young linguist if you trust their brains to do what they are exquisitely designed to do - acquire languages!
With love and language,
Michelle Ashkelon