Our little girl’s active vocabulary still tends to be mainly French, but when she has a word in one language, she usually sticks with it. The other day, Daddy asked her for the French version of one of her first words in German, namely cheese (Käse/fromage): Daddy: “Tu sais dire fromage?” (Can you say “cheese”?) […]

I was looking forward to this, or rather, I was curious about it. Mixing languages is a stage most bilingual kids go through, and normally it sorts itself out with time, once the child realises there are two different sets of vocabulary and how to use them. Correcting is not recommended, at least not in […]

Last weekend I took my little girl to see her granny (“Oma”) in Germany. It was an occasion to speak and hear only German for a few days, as Daddy stayed home. Oma doesn’t speak much French, and I had to translate “lait” and “chat”, but also “ouais” which she sometimes says instead of “oui”. […]

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 […]

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 […]