The big day approaches, and when I’m not busy preparing the practical part, or trying to catch up on sleep, I can’t help asking myself how this big change in our lives will affect us on a linguistic level.

The plan is to apply the very basic one-parent-one-language formula. This means Mommy will speak German to our girl and Daddy will speak French with her. A clear distinction is important, because she needs to learn to make the difference between the two, so that later she won’t mix them up.

Sounds complicated? It really isn’t, as long as you stick to those basic rules. The child has no default template for comparison, she will pick both languages up as she goes along. The important aspect is that we stick to the rules.

So what am I worried about if things are so simple, you might ask?

Well, the most obvious one, of course, will I be able to stick to the rules? It will mean a constant switch between French and German, since the parents’ common language as well as the environment language is French.

Also, how will the Daddy deal with it? He doesn’t speak German, and his understanding is, let’s say, rusty. We are both hoping he’ll build up his passive knowledge as we go along, but we can’t be sure.

Moreover, chances are that once I return to work, our little girl will be hearing only French all day long, reducing the exposure to German to what time I get to spend with her. Will that be enough? We have no native German-speaking friends or family nearby, which means one of our projects will be to find families in similar situations.

A few weeks ago, we met such a family with a girl of about three. Their constellation is exactly the same, down to the Daddy having forgotten his school German. Alas, they live in St-Malo. But they did reassure us that things worked fine despite the Mommy being the only German-speaker in the girl’s environment. They said that Maya the Bee was being of great help though, but you can’t have your child watch DVDs all day either.

Well I guess we can only try our best and see what happens. Watch this place for our experiences – that’s what this blog is all about, after all!