It’s hard to record a baby babbling. Whenever she talks the way you’d like to record her, the recording device (my MP3 player) is not at hand. And even when it is, as soon as she sees it, she shuts up and makes a grab for it. So I still haven’t managed to record her […]

This is a translation of my post in French below. The other day we had the dubious pleasure to share our B&B breakfast table with a group of four Bavarians, at least one of whom spoke acceptable French. Our landlady explained to them the various breads, cakes and jams on the table. I was already […]

L’autre jour nous avions le plaisir douteux de partager le petit déjeuner dans notre chambre d’hôte avec un groupe de quatre Bavarois, dont au moins un parlais acceptablement bien le français. Notre hôte leur expliquait les différents pains, gâteaux et confitures qui ornaient la table à manger. Je me creusais déjà le cerveau pour trouver […]

Today we were visiting with family. At one point we were at the table, and my little girl was sitting on the floor, playing. Her new red hat  was lying on the ground beside her, and she was turned away from me. “Please give mommy the hat.” When she picked up the hat, turned around […]

  She called me mommy last night! I apologise for the (possibly misleading) German title of this post, but the sentence resonates with me in my mother tongue more than it does in its English translation. Funny, that. But let’s get back to the event itself: After a couple of weeks during which I’ve heard […]

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 […]

Over a week after I first heard the “m” sound, I finally managed to record it: mama You hear “mama” at the 27′ mark, “papa” (or “baba”) follows right after. 🙂 happy mommy

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 […]

A cousin of mine, who grew up in the US with her mother speaking German, spent a school year with her grandparents in Germany, going to German junior high school (she was 10). She’s now perfectly bilingual. One of my friends was born of French parents in Paris but raised in the US, her mother […]

I came across this article today (though it’s two years old, almost to the day), which I found very interesting: A split in linguistic personalities I am not sure what to say about that myself. Do I behave differently in German than in English or in French? I’m scratching my head, trying to come up […]