This is not from my girl, but from a friend of hers, not quite a year older, who told her today:

“Les pigeons, c’est une espèce qui vole.”

J’attendais tellement qu’elle commence à parler (de manière compréhensible), et voilà, on y est. Quelques expressions qui nous ont fait rire, pour pas que je les oublie :

En rentrant, on croise des visiteurs qui quittent notre immeuble. La petite : “C’est qui ceux-là ?”

Ses saucisses, elle les mange avec de la “mammonaise”.

Et ça ? C’est un “raton”.

À suivre…

Don’t worry, we didn’t try to find out if our girl is really a girl – we just helped a researcher at the BabyLab of the “Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique” (their website has changed, by the way) in her study of whether 31-months-old toddlers already distinguish between “le” and “la” in the French language.
If you are a faithful reader of this blog, you’ll remember my recent note on that question.

Since our first participation in one of their studies, the BabyLab has moved to the new building of the Port-Royal maternity ward which finally opened last year. My girl got to sit on my lab and watch a big screen in front of her. A machine that tracks eye movements did, well, track her eye movements. As for me, I was once again listening to cool music with headphones, so that my reactions wouldn’t influence hers. I saw that she was shown two pictures, then a rainbow-coloured star, then two other pictures and so on, for about five minutes. I couldn’t hear what the voice said, except when it happened to speak between songs. But the researcher told me afterwards that it would say “Where is the…?” and that the picture pairs were sometimes of the same gender (both male or both female) and sometimes of different genders. The idea was to see if the article in the question, without the name of the object, would be sufficient to direct the child to look at the object of the corresponding gender.
I know this will sound confusing to English native speakers, but if you speak at least one language that has genders, like German, French, Italian or Russian, you will know what I mean. Here is an example:

Screen showing a cow (la vache) and a ship (le bateau): “Tu vois la [vache]?”

Will she look to the cow? Or to the ship? Or to neither?

As for what my girl did, I have no idea. All I know is that she cooperated well, no fidgeting or anything, not even when the experiment was prolonged as the computer suddenly decided to shut down and they had to start all over again.

As a reward, she got a “honorary member of the LSCP” diploma. We’ll put it up on the wall with her first one from December 2010. 🙂

Today our girl went out with Daddy. When they came home and left the car in our parking garage, she pointed to the fire extinguisher:

“Papa, que c’est que ça ?” (“Daddy, what’s that?”)

“C’est un extincteur. Pour éteindre s’il y a le feu.” (“That’s a fire extinguisher. When there’s a fire, to put it out.”)

“Ben non, tatütata.” (“No, the fire-fighters.”)

Mommy’s note: “tatütata” is the sound of the siren of the German fire-fighters and other emergency vehicles. In France, they go “pimponpimpon”.
(Mind you, when you hear it, it sounds exactly the same.)

This morning when we left home to go to the nanny’s, my little girl was extremely talkative. And by extremely, I mean she was talking non-stop.
I think it was some kind of story, or maybe the same story over and over again, as I recognised the same “words” several times.

Listen to her here:

story part one
story part two
story part three
story part four
story part five

There are occasional distractions, such as “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça ?”, “La lune !” or “De l’eau ?” as we were advancing on our usual route.

I didn’t manage to record the final sentence (how did I know when she was going to stop?), it occurred in the elevator and was actually fully comprehensive (but somewhat surprising):

“Papa est pas content de tout ça.” (“Daddy isn’t happy about all that.”)

I just noticed something interesting today. My little girl recently converted to muesli. I bought some fancy ones for kids at mymuesli (which I highly recommend), “Prinzessinnenmüsli” with strawberries and raspberries, and “Piratenmüsli” with tiny white and milk chocolate pieces. My little girl tried them both, and admired the beautifully decorated muesli tins they came in. Her choice was an obvious one – the one with the “Schokola-DE”.

But even though only I have been talking muesli with her (and thus in German), she will systematically refer to it as “muesli pirate”.

Just a fun moment from this morning:

Like every morning, my girl and I ride the bus one stop on our way to the nanny’s. Like every morning, I tell her “Wir steigen gleich aus” (“we’ll get off the bus in a moment”) as the bus approaches the bus stop. Like every morning, she gets down from her seat and we move towards the back (exit) door.

But today, she calls out to the driver: “Monsieur, arrête!” (“Stop, sir!”)

🙂

A week or two ago, the nanny told us about an incident that had occurred in the hall of her apartment building when they had met a neighbour. Our girl was wearing this:

The neighbour: “C’est un beau chapeau!” (“What a nice hat!”)

Our girl: “C’est pas chapeau!” (“That’s not a hat!”)

The neighbour, amused: “Oh pardon, c’est un beau bonnet!” (“Oh sorry, what a nice bonnet!”)

Our girl: “C’est pas bonnet!” (“That’s not a bonnet!”)

The neighbour, confused: “Alors, qu’est-ce que c’est sur ta tête?” (“Well, what are you wearing on your head?”)

Our girl: “Vache!” (“A cow!”)

(Isn’t that obvious?)

Did I mention that I hoped a stay with my non-French-speaking mom would get my girl to activate her German? It turns out this is sometimes easier than expected.

The other evening, my girl (two-and-a-half) was delaying going to bed by slowing down the undressing process:

“Maman, attends !” (“Mommy, wait!”)
Me (slightly unnerved because this had been going on for a while): “Nein, Schluss mit attends!” (No, no more attends!”)
She (not getting my point): “Warte!” (“Wait!” – in German, this time.)

Does baby language count as a language? I mean the sort consisting of fixed words (such as “wauwau” for “dog”) that are not real words yet are used os consistently that parents and other regular care-takers will understand them as if they were.

In that case, our daughter is making trilingual sentences.

“Wauwau pas da?”

Let me explain: The dog in question (in the TV show Little Princess we let her watch in German) had run off after a ball thrown very far and was gone for most of the (ten-minute) show.

wauwau: dog, baby language (“mau” has already been replaced by “chat”)

pas: not, French

da: there, German