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 […]

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 […]

Parfois ce sont les petites choses qui font sourire. Deux situations récentes : Ce soir, en fin de repas Mama : “Willst du Käse?” (Tu veux du fromage?) Notre fille (28 mois) : “Non, pas kä!” Elle court au frigo, visant le camembert. Papa : “Tu sais, le truc rond [la boîte de camembert], c’est […]

Yesterday, at almost 29 months, was a good day for talking: two full sentences! From the shoulders of her dad: “Papa, je veux descendre.” (Daddy, I want to go down.) Discovering the still too-complicated-to-handle Crayola pens on a higher shelf: “Il est là mon crayon!” (That’s where my pen is!)

Our little girl has very few words she actively uses in both languages. Usually, when she has one word, whether German or French or an onomatopoeia (such as “wauwau” for “dog”), she sticks with that, even if she understands perfectly well when we say “Hund” or “chien”. For some strange reason (and to my obvious […]