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 […]

Today we took our now ten-months-old girl to the Laboratoire Psychologique de la Perception at Paris V – Descartes University. She got to listen to a two-syllable sound (“ka-ba”) that was pronounced with different stresses, and by German and French native speakers. A light would blink on her left or right, and when she looked […]

The other night, Baby attempted what Daddy had already qualified as “bêtise” the week before – pulling the plug from her bathtub, effectively inundating our bathroom. This time we had a pail underneath, but still Daddy told her in a stern voice “Non!” Since last week I’d broken down laughing, I hurried to add my […]

At nine months and a few days, it is still too early to look for bilingual expression, obviously. But what about bilingual comprehension? Last week, our little girl started waving “goodbye” to me when I left her at the nanny’s. The first time it was the situation that prompted her action, or at least that’s […]

There is a lot of writing about linguistic interference in bilingual(-to-be) children, but it also occurs in parents. The other day, another German mom told me she got lost on the way to meeting me. We spoke German, obviously, and she said she had “sich verloren”. In French, the correct term is “se perdre”, literally […]

  …”ba-ba”. Listen to her here. This time I didn’t even look for German words starting with “ba-” since daddy just gave me “-teau” again. Now it won’t be long before she calls him “pa-pa” (“daddy” in both our languages). Sadly, the “m” sound is trickier 🙁

The other day, through a discussion on a networking site, I came across this: Speaking in tongues A mother in Lebanon tells of her children mixing three languages (English, French and Arabic) in a very peculiar way that has her and her husband scratching their heads. I’d be curious to know what has become of those kids […]

Does “gaga” count as a word? If so, our baby girl has started speaking. Listen to her! I tried to think of German words beginning with “ga-” that she might have been attempting to say. Here is what I came up with: Gartenschlauch Garage Garnitur Garmisch-Partenkirchen   Then I asked Daddy which French words began […]

Über eine Nachricht in einem Netzwerk kam ich zu diesem Post des Blogs “SprachenNetz”: Wie lernen Kleinkinder Fremdsprachen? Der Artikel beschreibt einen ähnlichen Versuch wie den, an dem wir teilgenommen haben: Im Forschungslabor „WortSchatzinsel“ am Georg-Elias-Müller Institut für Psychologie sehen die Kinder während des Versuchs auf einem großen Bildschirm Bilder und kurze Filme, gleichzeitig werden […]