We had house guests from the U.S. this weekend. One of their presents for our daughter were some shiny new state quarters from their home state to play with and practise counting. We explained to her that she couldn’t buy things with that money here, only in the “États-Unis”.
When our friends prepared to leave and packed their suitcase, they gave us some cookies they had left over and which our daughter liked a lot. She wanted to buy more, but Daddy explained that they don’t have those cookies here, only in the “États-Unis”.

She: “J’ai l’argent des États-Unis, je peux aller l’acheter chez États-Unis.” (I have money from the U.S., I can go and buy them in the US.)

Drawing in an activity book, our daughter counted two rows of six items each on the page.
Daddy: “Ça fait combien, six et six?” (So how much is 6 and 6?)
She: “Ben ça fait qu’il y en a encore beaucoup.” (Well, it means there are quite a lot.)

Yesterday we were getting into the car, when Dad told our almost-4-year-old daughter to put something into the trunk, “le coffre”. When she replied, however, she used the word suitcase, “la valise” instead.
This is what I think happened:
French le coffre – the trunk – is a false friend to German der Koffer – the suitcase, la valise in French. But could that really happen so quickly?

If you have children (and probably even if you don’t), you’ll be familiar with marshmallows. And chances are, your kids will, too. My daughter’s teacher used them to introduce the concept of “alternating”, making the kids put alternating white and pink marshmallows on a wooden stick.
In order to understand what follows, you need to know that in France, marshmallows are called “chamallows”. (Don’t ask me why.)

The other day, during our vacation in Brittany, Daddy was reading a bedtime story mentioning various sweets. When he read “chamallows”, our daughter exclaimed joyously:

“Nous aussi on va à Chamallow!”

That would be Saint Malo, the corsair city not far from the Mont Saint Michel.

What do you do when there is no word to express what you want to say? And when on top of that you are not quite four years old?

My daughter takes advantage of her dual vocabulary and borrows from the other language when she doesn’t know a word. She shows off her new long “Rock” (German for skirt) to her French classmates, who will understand because they see the skirt flouted in front of them, or asks Mommy if she can watch a “dessin manimé” (dessin animé, French for cartoon).

But the other day she surprised me with her creativity when it came to a word that really does not exist in German: the “goûter”.

In France, children finish school around 4pm, and whether they go home or stay in after-school care, they will invariably take a snack, if only to survive from lunch (at noon) to supper (which may be served as late as 8pm). This snack, and by extension any afternoon food, is called goûter. Friends might invite you to “prendre le goûter” on a weekend, meaning a tea-time sort of invitation.

There is no German equivalent, not least because German school days work differently, lunch is later and supper earlier. So what do you do?

My daughter’s answer was to take the closed approximation she knew, in this case breakfast. Hence her list of what she did at preschool on a given day: “Ich habe gespielt (I played), gegessen (I ate), geschlafen (I napped) und gefrühstückt (literally: I had breakfast).”

Saturday morning, Daddy and my little girl let me sleep in. As they had breakfast together, my daughter asked for “un Glas”. Daddy refused: “No ice cream for breakfast!”

It turned out she didn’t want “une glace” (an ice cream) but “ein Glas” (a glass, which in French would have been un verre).
Maybe if she’d said “un Glas de lait” (a glass of milk), Daddy would have got the message? Because contrary to ice cream, milk is allowed at breakfast.

Yesterday I took my now-almost-4-year-old daughter to the playground at the end of the street where I grew up and where my mom still lives. We’d been there before on a previous visit, it’s a nice little playground for younger kids, but this was the first time we went there and other kids (and moms) were present.
From what I overheard, they were all German except for a Spanish-language mother who spoke Spanish with her son. My daughter didn’t interact with any of the kids who were older than her but approached one girl who had to be about 2 or 2½. Holding out a borrowed shovel, she asked: “C’est à toi?” (Is that yours?)
After that little girl left, she found an even younger boy (almost two, his dad told me) whom she helped up the hill to the slide, saying “Prends ma main.” (Take my hand.)
I reminded her of what I’d told her during that little girl encounter: “Auf Deutsch, sonst versteht er dich nicht.” (In German, or he won’t understand you.)

Today, her little cousin (same age as the little boy) came to visit, and she never said a word in French (but many in German).

My mom and I both think that to her, these younger children fall into two categories: The playground children into “other children, like at school”, that is, French-speaking; her cousin, into the category “mommy’s family”, that is to say, German-speaking.

The one thing that throws off our theory a bit is that after a few minutes in the playground, and well before interacting with either of the two younger children, she exclaimed: “Mama, die sprechen Deutsch wie du!” (Mommy, they speak German like you!)

So, any guesses better than mine?

When my daughter (now going on 4) starts talking, a missing word is not going to stop her. When I’m the person she’s talking to, she’ll chat away in German and simply slip in a few French words here and there.
I’m trying to make out a patterm, and I’ve noticed a few words are systematically in French (in addition to words she might now know in German yet or that have slipped her mind). One of them is “t’as” for “du hast”, as in “T’as Recht, Mama.” (You’re right, mommy.) Another one is “quand” (when), making for sentences such as “Quand wir bei Oma sind,…” (When we are at granny’s…)

I always want to whip out my MP3 player and record her. Actually, the next time she says “Ich habe eine Idee” (which is generally a signal a long breathless idea is to follow), I might do just that.

Both my daughter and her father have recently been opposed to me recording bedtime stories. But since I bought this book on the condition that I record Dad reading it, they were unable to refuse. In fact, they are reading it together. Click on the title to listen and enjoy!

Ce livre se prête à merveille à une lecture à deux, et j’ai insisté auprès de ma fille et de son père pour pouvoir le faire. Cliquez sur le livre pour écouter et régalez-vous !

Dieses Buch haben meine Tochter und ihr Vater zusammen gelesen. Klickt auf das Buch zum Anhören. Viel Spaß!

Michel Van Zeveren – Pastel / École des Loisirs – ISBN 978-2-211-08639-4

This week, my daughter came home from school and showed me a drawing she had made. I noticed she had drawn two suns side by side, and the inevitable comment escaped my lips.

Today, the drawing was still lying in the living room when she saw it, picked it up and asked me: “Mama, comment on appelle un dessin avec zwei Sonnen?” (Mommy, how do you call a drawing with two suns?)

Tatooine, right?