The other day, at the swimming pool, my little girl didn’t want to get dressed. We were in the communal changing rooms reserved for the baby swimming group, and another child her age came in with his dad. At some point I told her “Guck, der Junge zieht sich auch an.” (“Look, the boy is […]

Last weekend I took my little girl to see her granny (“Oma”) in Germany. It was an occasion to speak and hear only German for a few days, as Daddy stayed home. Oma doesn’t speak much French, and I had to translate “lait” and “chat”, but also “ouais” which she sometimes says instead of “oui”. […]

There are so many words and little sentences she says, but just try to switch on the recorder at the right moment! Whether it’s “papa, la lune” (pointing to the moon) or “pas chat” (not to be confused with “non pas ça”), the recorder is never close at hand. But last Thursday I handed it […]

We’re at the next stage, with sentences like “non pas ça” (no not that) becoming more frequent. Today we had a good laugh when Daddy threatened to do something at the count of three. He began, in a suitably menacing voice: “Un…” (one) Our little girl, who’s beginning to learn numbers: “Non, pas deux!” (No, […]

Our girl has taken to scribbling with ball-point pens whenever she can get hold of them. And when she does, she asks for “papi” (Papier in German or papier in French, paper). With results that to our surprise look like this:

We’re still doing a lot of guesswork, but after a week or two of daddy’s hard work, our little girl has consented to calling a cat a “chat” instead of “mau”. Other words evolve without help: until very recently, her evening bottle (whether milk or soup) was designated as “lolo”, but now she makes the […]

Why didn’t I think of this earlier? Whenever I brought my MP3 player out to record my girl, she reached for it and any chances of catching her “natural speaking” were gone. This morning, I hit the “record” button and let her have it. She still thinks it’s a phone. (I’m glad it isn’t, or […]

We’re back from our holidays, and I realise just how much more our little girl (two years and one month) is saying these days. Ask her yes-no questions and you will get a real answer, sometimes a heartfelt “oh oui!” and at others a definite “ah non!”. There are more two-word sentences coming, notably in […]

After another two-word sentence tihs week, “maman encore” (mommy, do that again), my little girl has finally mastered the word yes. “Oui” (mostly) and “ja” (occasionally) replace her longstanding “hm” that we’ve generally taken for assent to far. There’s also “là” (there) when pointing at something, which she had not used in that way before. […]

Yes, our little girl attacks the challenge of longer words! The first ones I noted this week were pa(pa)pon for papillon (butterfly in French) and papagei(pa) for Papagei (parrot in German).