The other day, my now 8-year-old daughter was perusing the German TV magazine we’d gotten in Germany, since we receive a number of German channels. She’d already asked for explanations of several film categories that she didn’t know, but when she came across “Das Geschäft mit dem Blut” (The business with the blood), she asked: […]

Today, we were on the Métro 7 on our way to school, when my daughter asked at which station we were. I told her, and we looked at the métro map, and I read the names of all the stations we had passed or would pass. One of them is called Place Monge. Her: “Das […]

I never lose an occasion to try and work on basic German vocabulary – which at age 5½ includes a lot of numbers, days of the week, months of the year, you get the idea. So the other day, when my daughter rightly declared: “Morgen ist Freitag!” (Tomorrow is Friday), I prompted: “Und heute?” (And […]

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 […]

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 […]

During school holidays, our 4½-year-old daughter attends the centre de loisir in her school building. On the last day of the week, there is usually a party, and kids can come in costumes. Last Friday when I picked up my little witch, I met her BFF S. about whom I’d already heard a lot. She […]

A few weeks ago, I said something about Daddy being an adult. Which prompted this exclamation from our 4½-year-old daughter: “C’est pas un adulte, papa!” (Daddy isn’t a grown-up!) We looked at each other. He shrugged. I grinned. And she added the punch line: “C’est un parent.” (He’s a parent.)

The other day, my daughter (currently 4½) and I were playing with her various plush animals. She handed me her dragon hand puppet, informing me that it was not a real dragon. Me: “It’s not?” Her: “No, look.” She dropped it. “See? It can’t fly.”

Last week, during the European Aquatics Championships in Berlin (BLN 2014), I tried to watch whatever race I could catch between coming home from work and bedtime. I don’t follow any swimmers in particular, so when a race came up where I didn’t know a single name, I said: “I don’t know anyone there, I’ll […]

When we’re in Germany, I have a tendency to raid bookshops, much to the delight of my 4-year-old daughter (she always finds something by herself there). The other day, after our second raid in three days, we passed the bookshop we’d just left a little earlier. My daughter: “Können wir da nochmal rein?” (Can we […]