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Posts tagged ‘language acquisition’

Über

May 4th, 2015

Do you know the German prefix “über”? It means “over” and is used in such verbs as überholen (overtake), überhören (overhear), übersehen (overlook), überschreiben (overwrite) – you get the idea. However, it is also used to designate the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow is morgen, the day after tomorrow is übermorgen, and the day after the […]

Interviewing Mommy

April 27th, 2015

We’ve been reading a book where the protagonist interviews various people for her school newspaper. That gave my daughter the idea to interview me. And what better way to record her vocabulary and sentence structure? And her imagination, of course! Enjoy “Interview with Mommy” in three parts (and in German, our minority language): interview part […]

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 […]

First written words

February 24th, 2015

A few weeks ago, I don’t remember how exactly it started, my daughter and I began a spelling and writing game with nouns starting with SCH. (There are lots of those in German.) The idea was that I would spell the word, she would write it down, and then one of us would draw the […]

A lot of euros

October 7th, 2014

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 […]

A is for…

August 13th, 2014

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 – […]

On marshmallows

May 11th, 2014

If you have children (and probably even if you don’t), you’ll be familiar with marshmallows. And chances are, your kids will, too. My daughter’s teacher used them to introduce the concept of “alternating”, making the kids put alternating white and pink marshmallows on a wooden stick. In order to understand what follows, you need to […]

When there is no word

April 30th, 2014

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 […]

No ice cream for breakfast

April 21st, 2014

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 […]

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