About Diglot Books – Here at Diglot we love languages, but more than anything we love having fun!

We can all learn a lot of things from young children, but one of the best is that learning itself can be fun.

We have thrown away those boring text books, and 1970’s illustrations and replaced them with fun, vibrant beautifully illustrated bilingual books, toys, cd’s and games that can inspire anyone to learn a new language.

Diglot (Dahy-glot)

Adjective: Bilingual

Noun: A Bilingual book or person

From the Greek diglottos, from di- (two) + -glottos (tongue, language)

Diglot Books began life in 2010 following one of those simple over a coffee conversations that often happens between two friends.

Founder Alison O’Dornan was visiting with her friend Wilma vanRiel when Wilma mentioned a small but inspirational idea that she had for a bilingual ABC book for toddlers that only used words that began with the same letter in both languages.

The idea stemmed from time spent with her 18 month old daughter Sophie who was trying to get to grips with the alphabet in both her native Dutch and English languages.

Whenever Sophie was looking at a book on her own she would often get confused when the picture and letter didn’t match the word she thought ofin both languages.

For example when letter “D” was represented by a picture of Duck, which worked in English but not in Dutch where the word “eend” begins with “E”.

Alison was so inspired by this simple idea that she did some research to find out if anything like it already existed, and when she found there was nothing out there, she set about finding a way to make the idea into a book.

Fast forward to 2011 and combine that initial concept with Alison’s desire to inspire ordinary parents that is possible to raise their own children to be bilingual with all the cultural, creative and academic benefits that diglotto’s brings and Diglot Books Ltd was launched.

Since those humble beginnings of a discussion of an ABC book in Dutch and English around a kitchen table, Diglot has now extended its range to include a range of products in several languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Welsh and Dutch and are continually expanding this list.

The free audio files available help parents and children alike to listen to pronunciation and build confidence, the dual language parallel text in the books aids subliminal absorption of the vocabulary, and the ever friendly presence of Diglot the Dragon creates an enjoyable interactive way for children to learn a second language.