My little girl is into making sentences these days. They are somewhat lacking articles and prepositions, but you get the idea. Although they are generally in French, German words are being used. A popular expression is “That’s my…” “C’est ma Kuh !” (German, cow, female.) “C’est ma lapin !” (French, bunny, male.) “C’est ma coussin […]

I had hoped that our Christmas holiday with my monolingual mom would yield some results in term of active German vocabulary, but not even the day spent with my friend and her two daughters (almost 6 and almost 2, the former very talkative) did. Then two days ago, our also-almost-six-year-old bilingual neighbour came over, and […]

Wir waren heute mit dem Auto in der Stadt, als plötzlich von hinten der Ausruf kam: “Avance, c’est grün!” Obwohl sie alles versteht, was ich ihr sage, ist ihr aktives Vokabular überwiegend Französisch. Aber Rolf Zuckowskis Lied “Rotes Licht und grün” scheint bei ihr doch hängen geblieben zu sein 🙂 Apropos “doch”: Neben “ja” und […]

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 […]

Cette semaine, notre fille nous a fait rire bien malgré elle. D’abord, elle a demandé à sa nounou française du “kä” et comme celle-ci ne s’exécutait pas, elle a insisté “fromage”. Le lendemain matin, la nounou me raconte l’histoire, puis se tourne vers ma fille en disant : “Montre à maman comment tu sais bien […]

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 […]

L’émission On est faits pour s’entendre, sur RTL, avait invité, le 02 octobre 2012, Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer, fondatrice du Café Bilingue et généralement spécialiste dans la matière du bilinguisme, pour une discussion sur les enfants bilingues. Pour l’instant, l’émission qui dure 35 minutes est encore disponible sur le site de RTL ici. (Si le lien ne […]