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 […]

Comment élever un enfant dans le bilinguisme, c’est le titre d’une émission passée cette semaine sur RFI, avec comme invitée, Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer, fondatrice du Café Bilingue et généralement spécialiste dans la matière. Pour l’instant, l’émission qui dure 26 minutes est encore disponible sur le site de RFI ici. (Si le lien ne marche plus, j’ai […]

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 […]

Morgendliches Ritual: Wir gehen aus der Wohung, ich schließe die Tür ab, sie läuft vor zum Fahrstuhl. Neulich forderte ich sie mal wieder auf: “Rufst du den Fahrstuhl?” “Hallo!” 🙂

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).