As I mentioned recently, French is becoming the dominant language in my girl’s active vocabulary. Being the bilingualism-obsessed mother that I am, I’ll let you imagine the joy with which I greet exclamations such as the one today in the car: “Papa, c’est grün!” As an aside, this is her mother’s daughter. In my own […]

My little girl has recently taken to comment on the quality of food, distinguishing between “bon” (good) and “pas bon” (not good). So the other day, I asked my little girl if her yoghurt was good: “Ist der Joghurt lecker?” This is the reply I got: “C’est pas pas bon.” Now let’s see: “not not […]

If the number of French words and the almost exclusively French phrases I hear from my daughter (29 months) these days weren’t enough, French is now also taking over her German words. She still says “kä” when she refers to cheese with us, but the nanny has reported her to say “fromage” when “kä” didn’t […]

The obvious answer is yes. In a recent study of monolingual French infants aged 20 months, researchers introduced them to new words in a foreign language in an attempt to find out if and how easily they would assimilate them. They came to the conclusion that the results obtained in the study show that 20-months-old […]

I know I’m overdue for some of my little girl’s talking. There is no shortage of it these days, “Il est là, le [insert word of your choice here]” is a recurring phrase. So I don’t really have an excuse. Except that the recording device is not always (or rather, rarely) at hand when she […]

Yesterday, at almost 29 months, was a good day for talking: two full sentences! From the shoulders of her dad: “Papa, je veux descendre.” (Daddy, I want to go down.) Discovering the still too-complicated-to-handle Crayola pens on a higher shelf: “Il est là mon crayon!” (That’s where my pen is!)

I thought it was good fun to introduce my little girl to Pippi Longstocking. Even more so when I discovered there’s a new illustrated editon with the most lovely pictures. Nostalgic as I am, they made me ditch my old copy with the black-and-white drawings. (Besides, the new one has the new German spelling and […]

Our little girl has very few words she actively uses in both languages. Usually, when she has one word, whether German or French or an onomatopoeia (such as “wauwau” for “dog”), she sticks with that, even if she understands perfectly well when we say “Hund” or “chien”. For some strange reason (and to my obvious […]

Our little girl’s active vocabulary still tends to be mainly French, but when she has a word in one language, she usually sticks with it. The other day, Daddy asked her for the French version of one of her first words in German, namely cheese (Käse/fromage): Daddy: “Tu sais dire fromage?” (Can you say “cheese”?) […]

I was looking forward to this, or rather, I was curious about it. Mixing languages is a stage most bilingual kids go through, and normally it sorts itself out with time, once the child realises there are two different sets of vocabulary and how to use them. Correcting is not recommended, at least not in […]