For the Love of (Effortless) Bilingualism.

At Moli.Boli, we love the idea of kids sharing in their parents' cultural histories, eventually growing and shaping their own roots while often blending two or more places -- and languages. Like every good thing worth doing, this cultural and linguistic assimilation takes a bit of effort and lots of love.

Bilingualism (or multilingualism) is something most Indians are intuitively familiar with. With 22 officially recognized languages, everyone brings their own masala to the party, with English translating those different worlds into mostly understandable harmony.

But ... that's when one is growing up in India.

What happens when we bring new lives into this world... in a place geographically and culturally so distant from our own beginnings? A desire to teach our children all about our world and customs comes up against busy lives and a bewildering cocktail of languages, cultures, stories, values, and even food and dress.

Diaspora kids discover their adopted country's language through toys, music, videos, and from everyday conversations around them (including parents!). That daily osmosis makes kids instinctively think in the language of the place they live in. And in a global world, they probably pick up English as well.

It’s how kids growing up in Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram express themselves so easily in Malayalam. But when you live in New York, London, Sydney, or Singapore? Malayalam is all about Saturday mornings spent with that tutor in that building half an hour away -- and often taking you away from much more exciting football or dance practice. Total chore!

At Moli.Boli, we're focused on designing toys, books, and experiences that enable learning of heritage Indian languages by osmosis—small nudges at home, in the car, and at bedtime that help instinctively absorb the language and culture.

If you find that promising -- and are geeky nerds like us --- check out why we think (idealistically, perhaps) that simultaneous bilingualism tops sequential bilingualism.