My little girl got a balloon on a “stick” today in a big furniture chain store. She waved it around and the balloon half slipped off the stick. My daughter alerted us to this distressing situation with these two consecutive sentences: “Mein Ballon est cassé!” “Ma ballon ist kaputt!” Either case, 50% French, 50% German. […]

Yesterday, my girl surprised me once again with a stunning leap between languages similar to the pasta & fries one. Daddy had told her today they would be going to the Cité des Enfants, a great hands-on experience for 2-to-7-year-olds (another section is geared at 5-to-12-year-olds) at La Villette. Cité des Enfants literally translates to […]

When this afternoon, returning to the car at a shopping centre, our little girl asked about “les pâtes”, we thought she was talking about dinner. But when the question came again, “les pâtes pour la piscine” (the pasta for the swimming pool) this time, we had to dig a little deeper. Take a guess before […]

The other day it hit me again how most of the German words our now three-year-old uses in her mixed sentences are either nouns or adjectives. A linguist could probably give me a complicated explanation, but I’ll stick with the simple one that they are easier to use than verbs. Examples? Donne-moi la Buch! (By […]

My little girl just turned three, and she talks a lot – in French, but liberally sprinkled with German words, such as: “Donne-moi da [das] Buch.” If you ask her “How does mommy say?”, she’ll immediately provide German words for such terms as aujourd’hui – heute (today), jaune – gelb (yellow) or hippo – Nilpferd […]

One of the cutest expressions from my little girl was her name for this: “bébé Maria” Yesterday she called it a “Marienkäfer”. And today she asked me for “Apfelsaft” instead of her usual “jus pomme”. Where does time go?  

Wir waren ein paar Tage bei der Oma. Ich habe eine Reihe deutscher Wörter gehört (danke schön, Mama!) und merke, es geht auch zu Hause weiter. Vorhin beim Auspacken der Einkäufe reichte sie mir meine Sachen mit “Für dich!” Wir sind in Deutschland Schon im Zug merkte sie, das etwas anders ist. Nach der Ansage […]

A couple of weeks ago, we were staying with friends in Germany whose son is the same age as our daughter. I’d hoped this would get her to activate her passive German vocabulary, and it did. Here’s one very cute example:

Over the long weekend, we went to see friends in Germany whose son is the same age as our little girl. The two hit it off right away, but for the first day and a half our girl used the method of “if he doesn’t understand me, I must repeat and speak more loudly”. “Viens, […]

A week ago, we were having supper together. The “main course” (followed by cheese and dessert) was over, and Daddy was taking the plates into the kitchen. We were ready to get on with the cheese, but there was something missing on the table. “Papa, Messer couper fromage!”