The other day, actually the morning after her second birthday, my little girl and I were on Skype with Grandpa, sitting on the bed so she’d be in front of the laptop’s camera. While we were talking, she installed herself with a pillow, a doll and the covers and said “[Her name] dodo.” (Translation: “I […]

I might or might not have mentioned that our girl, when she’s in the right mood, will repeat words after us. With one exception: If she already has a word for something (like “mau” for “cat”), she won’t say “cat”, however often we say it. She’ll stick with “mau”. So I guess her onomatopoeia should […]

We’re back from a visit with the German granny (Oma), where our little girl had a lot to say. Here’s a sample of what she told her Oma as they were looking at the pictures of a fairy tales book together: talk

As our little girl is closing in on her second birthday, I can’t help comparing her language skills to those of her peers. Her daddy told me the other day about his colleague’s girl (two months younger) who put her sleeping bag on her parents’ bed and declared “Moi dodo là.” That’s a full sentence, […]

Following on the heels on my post from earlier this week reporting the first bilingual expression of our little girl, yesterday I did my first bilingual correction. We were on the phone with my mom. That is to say, I was on the phone with the loudspeaker on, and my daughter was listening. She said […]

I proudly announce that our girl is now officially bilingual: Today she said for the first time a word in French that she already says in German. Which one? Good-bye. That is to say, “aurvoir” (still contracted) after “tschü-tschüß” about two months ago. With the handful of recognisable words she says, it seems to me […]

Today we went to see a child-minder because our child-minder is on sick leave. The lady is already looking after a little boy three months younger than our girl. We stayed for a while and the two of them played. There was a little tent in the room, and they had been in and out […]

It’s always nice when the subject gets positive treatment in the mainstream media. Here is a recent article from the NY TImes / International Herald Tribune titled “Why Bilinguals are Smarter – The Benefits of Bilingualism”.

This weekend I discovered that sometimes a lesson in bilingualism doesn’t need more than a little goodwill and basic (and I mean very basic) muscial skills. You see, our little girl is the proud owner of a xylophone – and the only tune I can play on it is “Alle meine Entchen”. There might be […]

Remember our attempts at sign language? I thought it was exciting, but given our lack of using the signs, our little girl has mastered a grand total of two signs: all done and cheese. Today I had a look at the website of Baby Signs® and found an article on signing in a biligual setting […]