An dieser Stelle möchte ich mal eine etwas andere Buchempfehlung machen: “Lüttjet Platt – Mein erstes Platt-Buch” von Valeska Scholz ist ein ganz herrliches Kartonbilderbuch mit den ersten unumgänglichen Wörtern, die jeder plattschnackende Schietbüdel kennen sollte. Plattdüütsch ist schließlich eine ganz eigene Sprache (und genausogut wie ein Jodeldiplom ;-))

Das Buch zur zweisprachigen Kindererziehung von Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer (www.enfantsbilingues.com und www.cafebilingue.com) ist auch auf Deutsch erschienen, und der Verlag bietet auf seiner Website eine Leseprobe mit der Einleitung und dem ersten Kapitel zum Download an (PDF ca. 660kb). Ich empfehle die Lektüre zumindest dieser insgesamt zehn Seiten als Einführung ins Thema. Zum Weiterlesen gibt’s das […]

Deutschsprachige Artikel zu dem Thema finde ich nicht so häufig, aber hier ist einer, in der Form eines Interviews mit einer Forscherin des Babysprachlabors an der Universität Konstanz: “Mehrsprachigkeit hat positive Effekte”

The other day my little girl did not like what I was doing (I think I was taking something away…), and I suddenly realised her “naiiiii” might well be “nein”. (Sadly, “no” is a word she hears often from me, i.e. in German.) On the same night I found myself wondering if the oft-repeated syllable […]

In the TED talks series, here is one on language acquisition that shows some quite fascinating findings. Watch it here.

This week I came across an article about a new university study on bilingual babies. The study, published online Aug. 17 in Journal of Phonetics, is the first to measure brain activity throughout infancy and relate it to language exposure and speaking ability. […] [The study’s observations] suggest[s] that the bilingual brain remains flexible to […]

When our girl was just eight months old, a friend with an older child (also German-French) told me about baby signing and lent me some books and DVDs. I had been sceptical before, thinking it was just the latest fad, but now I read about it, I wanted to give it a try. The books […]

I’ve often thought about mixing. I don’t mean a young child mixing, I mean a bilingual adult mixing. The other day I was reading “Mit zwei Sprachen groß werden” by German author Elke Montanari (a book I recommend as an introduction for anyone newly confronted with the subject), and what she had to say got […]

A friend of mine in the U.S. of A. is a professional voice artist. She has also adopted our little girl as her granddaughter and is planning to teach her English long-distance, via the modern means of communication. To start with, she sent a picture dictionary and an MP3 of her reading it. A sample: […]

Following our participation in a research project yesterday (see my previous post), we have been asked if our baby babbles in German or in French. (See also this article on the BBC website with a soundbite comparing the crying of German and French infants.) Here are some recent soundbites from our little girl, judge for yourselves if […]