We finished our holidays with a few days at my mother’s who is a retired school teacher and takes care to speak a lot with our little girl. They both love looking at books together, and one richly illustrated fairy tale book is a perennial favourite. So there they were, looking at a story, and […]

A few days after we returned from our ice cream intensive holiday (see my previous post on the subject), we went to the beach in Normandy and bought an ice cream before heading home. My little girl ordered her cornet of strawberry ice cream and a little plastic spoon all by herself – in German!

Tonight my little girl and I were doing a puzzle when she had to go to the bathroom. Reminding me not to continue without her, she informed me: “Ma-ya tout de suite wieder.” She amended/added immediately to: “Ma-ya komm wieder.” * In case I hadn’t understood, I suppose. 🙂   * “Ma-ya” is her expression […]

C’est toujours rigolo (au début du moins) quand les jeunes enfants mélangent deux mots similaire. Ainsi, le fils d’une amie jouait aux pirates qui vont “à l’ascenseur!” J’ai compris que ma fille était arrivée à cette étape-là quand elle commençait à me dire tout ce qu’elle allait faire “dimanche”, alors qu’elle n’a pas encore la […]

My little girl got a balloon on a “stick” today in a big furniture chain store. She waved it around and the balloon half slipped off the stick. My daughter alerted us to this distressing situation with these two consecutive sentences: “Mein Ballon est cassé!” “Ma ballon ist kaputt!” Either case, 50% French, 50% German. […]

Once more I’ve had proof that kids can learn a language very quickly when they want to. My daughter, who until our recent holiday in Germany had yet to say her first full German sentence, learned within the first few days that to get her ice cream after supper at our hotel, she had to […]

Notizen aus dem Urlaub: Die Betreuerin im Kids Club spricht kein Französisch, so wird “Moi aussi!” schon mal als “Mausi!” verstanden. Aber das ist o.k. Wenn meine Mausi merkt, dass man sie nicht/falsch versteht, wird sie’s schon anders probieren. “Eis, bitte!” sagt sie ja auch, wenn sie mit “Je veux une glace!” nichts kriegt.

Yesterday evening we were sitting outside an Eiscafé where my little girl shared an icecream with her grandpa. It must have made her thirsty because she asked: “à boire”. When after several repeats of the requests no one reacted, she asked “trinken?”. Grandpa promptly asked her “Du möchtest was trinken?” and signalled for the waitress. […]

Yes, I’m jumping up and down in my excitement. So what was the big thing? My little girl has been peppering her French sentences with German words for a month or two now (more markedly since those two brief visits to Germany in May), but the full “pure” German sentence remained elusive. Now today we’d […]

Yesterday, my girl surprised me once again with a stunning leap between languages similar to the pasta & fries one. Daddy had told her today they would be going to the Cité des Enfants, a great hands-on experience for 2-to-7-year-olds (another section is geared at 5-to-12-year-olds) at La Villette. Cité des Enfants literally translates to […]