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, […]

We just spent a long weekend with monolingual German friends who have a son almost exactly our girl’s age. (More on the effects on that on our little girl’s bilingualism later.) These friends are clearly unfamiliar with the concept of bilingual families, but the question they asked proved interesting. It was fairly simple: Why German, […]

This weekend, we had a German friend staying with us who doesn’t speak French. Yesterday evening, our little girl wanted to play with her and asked: “Jouer ballon.” (play ball) She repeated her request several times, even though our friend told her (in German) she didn’t understand and I suggested she ask in German. In […]

Il y a deux jours, notre petite fille (34 mois ou presque 3 ans) nous a donné une belle énigme, en répétant le mot suivant : “un para chon”   Deux jours pour trouver ce qu’elle disait (réponse ci-dessous).                

Today Daddy remarked to me, “She’s talking really well,” after another full sentence from our girl. I couldn’t help but sigh “If only she did it in German.” Whereupon Daddy turned to her and said, “Tu parles en allemand à maman ?” (You speak German with Mommy?) Her answer: “Non.” Daddy: “Pourquoi pas ?” (Why […]

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!”

Hier ist ein Ausschnitt aus dem Buch “Pippi in Taka-Tuka-Land”, aus einer Szene, kurz nachdem Pippi mit Tommy und Annika auf der Insel an Land gegangen ist. Während Kapitän Langstrumpf (alias König Efraim) den Regierungsgeschäften nachgeht, machen die Kinder ersten Kontakt mit den Taka-Tuka-Kindern. Pippi spricht Taka-tukanisch Mir fällt dabei zweierlei auf: “Sogar die Kinder” […]

I love these situations: I’m picking up my daughter at her child-minder’s. The other little girl in her care, J., a few months younger, has brought her tricycle, which is parked near the door. (Incidentally, it’s identical to hers. When she opened the door for me and saw me wearing my bike helmet, then the […]

In the series, “I know what’s on my head” (see my previous post), my little girl wore her wonderful hand-knitted hat from her grandaunt the other day when we met with our German-French friends: When the other girl’s dad exclaimed “Du hast ja eine Tomate auf dem Kopf!” (You’re wearing a tomato on your head!), […]

Today our girl went out with Daddy. When they came home and left the car in our parking garage, she pointed to the fire extinguisher: “Papa, que c’est que ça ?” (“Daddy, what’s that?”) “C’est un extincteur. Pour éteindre s’il y a le feu.” (“That’s a fire extinguisher. When there’s a fire, to put it […]