This weekend I discovered that sometimes a lesson in bilingualism doesn’t need more than a little goodwill and basic (and I mean very basic) muscial skills.
You see, our little girl is the proud owner of a xylophone – and the only tune I can play on it is “Alle meine Entchen”. There might be more variety if I had the in-between notes (the black keys on a piano). Still, as I hinted above, this was sufficient becasue my girl liked it and kept asking me to play it again. And again. And again. In French. And I would repeated “again?” again and again and again. In German.
And she nodded and made her unilingual “yes” sound.
I don’t expect her to say it in German any time soon because “nochmal” is much harder to pronounce than “encore” (or “cor” as her current version goes), but I think she’s getting the message that both mean the same. And that’s what bilingualism is all about at this stage, right?