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Posts tagged ‘mixing languages’

Don’t make a cheese about it

November 21st, 2018

Tonight, my daughter (almost 8½ now) was doing her daily reading in German from the first Harry Potter book. I try not to interrupt her all the time to correct, but occasionally I do. This time, apparently, it was too often, for she told me: “Mama, korrigiere mich, aber mach da nicht so einen Käse […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 – […]

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 […]

Why “quand”?

April 10th, 2014

When my daughter (now going on 4) starts talking, a missing word is not going to stop her. When I’m the person she’s talking to, she’ll chat away in German and simply slip in a few French words here and there. I’m trying to make out a patterm, and I’ve noticed a few words are […]

The other day my daughter melted into tears on the métro. The incident prompted me to ask the advice of a friend, mother of four and “second mom” to many more. I described to her similar situations at home where my daughter would not react to me asking her “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” […]

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