CARYN Antonini The creator of the successful children’s language program , “Early Lingo” talked with RCM Editor Lon Levin and here ’s the interview.
What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?
As a child I was always very interested in different languages and cultures. My parents both traveled and had traveled extensively and brought those experiences to life in our home through food, art, music, stories and décor. Growing up, I was further influenced by the constant flow of international visitors in our home. They taught me about their languages, their countries and customs, and I desperately wanted to visit those countries if I hadn’t already. I was fortunate to be able to travel and study languages at a young age. I was often found with a children’s book in any given language and a dictionary to decode it. Tell us how your background played a part in your choosing to be a children’s educational producer ? As a child I was always looking for a product on the market that could teach me languages in a fun, engaging way. The only thing that my parents or I could find were cassettes and books for adult language learning, which I used, nonetheless. I finally discovered a specialty language shop in NYC but the materials were expensive and not always readily available. As a young adult, I still found nothing on the market that I found suitable for children so I created my own. Tell us a little about Early Lingo and where the idea came from? How has it performed over the years and did it reach your expectations as a learning tool??
When did you first think about performing, writing and producing film as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers and mentors?
Early Lingo has global distribution and is used in school systems in the U.S., Fiji, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It is sold in over 70 countries. We started with DVDs then added a full curriculum, which included workbooks and flashcards. To date we have 65 products. In 2016 we introduced the Early Lingo Language Series App – our entire curriculum, including additional games, a written test section and lessons. In 2018 we launched the Jojo’s
The idea of Early Lingo first came to me after I had graduated Georgetown University. I had studied in the School of Languages and Linguistics, where one linguistics class in particular sparked my imagination for how I could create a program for very young children to learn foreign languages. I was actively encouraged by family members, faculty at the University and mentors. 12
