The other day my little girl did not like what I was doing (I think I was taking something away…), and I suddenly realised her “naiiiii” might well be “nein”. (Sadly, “no” is a word she hears often from me, i.e. in German.) On the same night I found myself wondering if the oft-repeated syllable […]

In the TED talks series, here is one on language acquisition that shows some quite fascinating findings. Watch it here.

This week I came across an article about a new university study on bilingual babies. The study, published online Aug. 17 in Journal of Phonetics, is the first to measure brain activity throughout infancy and relate it to language exposure and speaking ability. […] [The study’s observations] suggest[s] that the bilingual brain remains flexible to […]

When our girl was just eight months old, a friend with an older child (also German-French) told me about baby signing and lent me some books and DVDs. I had been sceptical before, thinking it was just the latest fad, but now I read about it, I wanted to give it a try. The books […]

Two days in a row I managed to capture my little girl talking to herself, in what I’m told experts call “jargon”. Please listen to these two soundbites: “bap” talk And watch her read:  

After two weeks of two-on-one (that is, Mommy and Daddy with Baby 24/7 or pretty much so), our baby girl has returned home with many new impressions (such as 17°C North Sea water is very nice, fine dry sand on the beach above however is not), but with very little new expressions. If pressed, I’d […]

I’ve often thought about mixing. I don’t mean a young child mixing, I mean a bilingual adult mixing. The other day I was reading “Mit zwei Sprachen groß werden” by German author Elke Montanari (a book I recommend as an introduction for anyone newly confronted with the subject), and what she had to say got […]

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: […]