I’m used to being the designated interpreter whenver we’re around my family or my old friends, few of whom speak French. Whether my dad comes visiting, or we stay for Christmas at my mom’s, I’m always glad when I make it through the days without mixing up languages. I don’t mean mixing them up in […]

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 […]

Asterix The other day I took out “Asterix and Son” from my Asterix collection, to read it again in a new light after several years. The “new light” revealed itself to be, rather unexpectedly, a few lessons for all new parents. I knew there were things to be learned from Asterix, but childcare? Be careful […]

Here we are. The baby is there, as you no doubt know, and she is being talked to. With all the good advice from the books (see biblio section) in mind, my first word to her was in German. (No, I won’t tell what it was, that’s just between the two of us.) I also […]

The big day approaches, and when I’m not busy preparing the practical part, or trying to catch up on sleep, I can’t help asking myself how this big change in our lives will affect us on a linguistic level. The plan is to apply the very basic one-parent-one-language formula. This means Mommy will speak German […]

Given names The significance of names has changed over the ages. In Ancient Rome, so I have read, they stopped bothering about first names for girls at some point. In Eastern Frisia, my granny’s home, children would receive the same names over and over again from generation to generation, and if in those big families […]

After some fiddling around with the settings, comments on posts are now enabled, so please go ahead and comment. Kommentare sind jetzt aktiviert – Ihr könnt loslegen. Vous pouvez désormais commenter les posts – allez-y.

A few weeks ago, via various sources, I came across a study that said already at birth, babies cry in their mother’s language (their mother being the one person they will always hear, once they can hear). The study compared German and French babies in particular since the difference is so obvious in the spoken […]

I’ve been brave today and exposed my slowly growing belly to the camera. Have a look at the pictures here.