It’s been a while, and I don’t even have a “mama” or “papa” recording to show for it. I do have, however, two samples of my baby in a very good and a very bad mood. Plus more babbling. Listen here: babble more babble unhappy baby laughing baby (she’s getting tickled and enjoying every moment […]

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 […]

A friend of mine in the U.S. of A. is a professional voice artist. She has also adopted our little girl as her granddaughter and is planning to teach her English long-distance, via the modern means of communication. To start with, she sent a picture dictionary and an MP3 of her reading it. A sample: […]

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 […]

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 […]

While waiting to catch her saying “mommy” again, here’s a recording I made of her babbling away in the bathtub – hence the slightly hollow sound. Towards the end, you’ll also hear her splashing around. Just click on the bathtub:

  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 […]

You know these little “prisons” whre you put your baby when it starts moving around? They are called “playpen” in English, which makes sense, since the baby will play there (if you put some toys in). In German they are called “Laufstall”, “walking stable”, which makes a lot less sense because that’s exactly what they […]

Following our participation in a research project yesterday (see my previous post), we have been asked if our baby babbles in German or in French. (See also this article on the BBC website with a soundbite comparing the crying of German and French infants.) Here are some recent soundbites from our little girl, judge for yourselves if […]

Today we took our now ten-months-old girl to the Laboratoire Psychologique de la Perception at Paris V – Descartes University. She got to listen to a two-syllable sound (“ka-ba”) that was pronounced with different stresses, and by German and French native speakers. A light would blink on her left or right, and when she looked […]