Yesterday, my 5-year-old daughter and her German grandma (Oma) settled down to watch a Garfield cartoon. My daughter told Oma: “If Garfield is in French, you can learn French!” Then the opening sequence finished and a voice announced the title of the episode. My daughter’s eyes opened wide and she exclaimed: “It’s in German!” Well, […]

I am very much looking forward to our visit with Grandma, because she hasn’t seen my now 5-year-old daughter in a while (3 months, that is). I’d like her to tell me if my impression is right that my daughter’s German skills have improved quite a bit recently. Just tonight, as I came home after […]

Two weeks ago, on Easter weekend, my family accompanied me to Amsterdam, where I attended a conference. They spent the weekend with the family of another attendee, whose daughter is two years older than mine. They live in Germany, but her mother is English. The two girls had a great time, chatting away in German […]

My 4½-year-old daughter speaks German (minority language) with a French (majority language) accent, up to and including the famous “H”. I expect this will get better as her German grows stronger. Meanwhile, she doesn’t always seem to hear the difference, either. Which led to a funny situation the other day when I read her a […]

Two nights ago, I read my 4-year-old daughter a new book from the Conni series (for the second time). Afterwards, she chose the same book for Daddy’s bedtime story. Whenever she chooses a German book for him, he tells the story by the images, which works well for this series. However, some details mentioned in […]

This afternoon, my daughter and I went to the playground with her friend E. and her mother. I had only found out recently that the mother is anglophone, and so of course I chatted her up on the subject. At some point, the girls came to see us. E. wanted something from her mother who […]

My four-years-and-one-month-old daughter recently expressed the wish to learn reading. So naturally I pulled out all the stops, ordered a reading kit from Kinder lernen lesen and bought an alphabet poster. Last night, she “read” the first letter and proudly declared “A wie pomme!”

Yesterday we were getting into the car, when Dad told our almost-4-year-old daughter to put something into the trunk, “le coffre”. When she replied, however, she used the word suitcase, “la valise” instead. This is what I think happened: French le coffre – the trunk – is a false friend to German der Koffer – […]

What do you do when there is no word to express what you want to say? And when on top of that you are not quite four years old? My daughter takes advantage of her dual vocabulary and borrows from the other language when she doesn’t know a word. She shows off her new long […]

Saturday morning, Daddy and my little girl let me sleep in. As they had breakfast together, my daughter asked for “un Glas”. Daddy refused: “No ice cream for breakfast!” It turned out she didn’t want “une glace” (an ice cream) but “ein Glas” (a glass, which in French would have been un verre). Maybe if […]