I recently interviewed a multilingual friend who is originally from Spain but grew up in the Brussels area where she still lives now. She arrived there as a young child in a Catalan-only speaking family and would go back to Spain to visit family several times (including summer holidays) each year. With her parents and sisters she will always speak Catalan, except to accommodate a non-Catalan-speaking third person (like me, for instance). Here she tells me about her schooling:

I speak Catalan at home (but never studied it). I’m not a home-bilingual.
I went to the European School at age 4 and through all my schooling, in the Spanish section. That means that my lessons were in Spanish, with Spanish teachers. I learned it in 2 months…kids are amazing.

At age 6 (1^er primaire) we started having L2, French for me. One hour per day, I think, until reaching secondaire (there was also tv, whose influence was also important). I’m now bilingual in that language. We had language trips, with the L2 class, in which we had no other option than to use it.

There were also European Hours, where the class was divided in two or three, and we shared an artistic lesson with another country section.

When reaching secondaire (12 years old), we started having complementary classes (art, music and gymnastics) in L2…Not exactly: professors had to talk in English and French, but used mostly the one they were better at… I had that teacher who just talked in English while I had never had one lesson. Luckily I had friends whose L2 was English.

In 2^ndsecondaire (13 years old) we started L3, English for me (3 hours per week, or something like that). I was in the less advanced level for all my years. Was not really good at it… well, yes, compared with some of my fellow students I was pretty good.

We also had at that time History and Geography in L2 (French). (Some took the option to study a 4^th and 5^th language, but I never did that. I also didn’t take Latin lessons.)
And the fact that we were forced to talk first (try playing baseball with a group of Danish girls), then really had friends whose language we didn’t speak forced us to use our L2 and L3.

There was the option in 6^th and 7^th year secondaire (17/18 years) to take classes in L2 that had not enough students in your own language, like difficult maths or physics. I think that it shows that the level was pretty good…

That’s all, I think. It’s a peculiar case, I know. But the school formula works pretty well.

And to end with my story on languages, I had the occasion to travel to Oxford for a 3 weeks language course, where I had the occasion to see that even if I’m not fluent, I can certainly communicate in English.

To complete this, I asked her how her linguistic experience compares to those of her sisters (she is number 2 out of 4):

I started studying French at 6 years old in school, but by the time I got there, I knew already a lot of it, thanks to TV and life in general.
The ‘little’ sisters were born here. They went to a daycare center in French as toddlers, and learned French there.
With the first one of them, we (the older sisters) were so happy about her knowing it that we liked to talk to her in French, and the result was that by the holidays, she had forgotten how to talk in Catalan. A problem with grandparents and other family members who understood nothing of what she said. On the contrary, she understood everything of what they told her. We were told to keep to Catalan, and in no time she stopped using French. She kept using occasional words, but nothing disastrous.
Things of life, she is the one who has done most life in French, be it studies, friends, boyfriends (he is learning Catalan, mind you! on prevision to have bilingual kids with a disadvantaged language ) or work.
With the other we had already learned the lesson, so we talked with her directly in Catalan. She knew French too, but did not use it at home. She was not talkative, but that was more because she was the 4th than a language problem…
When they got to school in Spanish they kept the three languages separated.
English was learned much later in life.

My little girl is into making sentences these days. They are somewhat lacking articles and prepositions, but you get the idea.
Although they are generally in French, German words are being used.
A popular expression is “That’s my…”

“C’est ma Kuh !” (German, cow, female.)

“C’est ma lapin !” (French, bunny, male.)

“C’est ma coussin !” (French, pillow, male.)

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 as the two were playing tent and hiding under a blanket, my daughtere’s usual “encore” for “again” was replaced by a spontaneous “nochmal”, word which I otherwise usually only get when she repeats it after me. And even then she usually nods and says “encore”.

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 “nein” ist “doch” eins der Wörter, die sie (anscheinend ganz bewusst) mit mir benutzt , während sie zu ihrem Papa “oui”, “non” und “si” sagt. Inletzter Zeit habe ich auch öfter “nee” gehört. Da muss ich wohl ein bisschen besser aufpassen…

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 mother’s collection of memorable utterances, you will find em recorded with “Mein lieber Freund, es ist grün.” – “My dear friend [ironically], the light is green.” Albeit at a later age (kindergarten).

When I lamented my minority-language status to her daddy, he pointed out that she has taken to saying “ja” and “nein” to me instead of “oui” and “non”. I’ve since paid attention to it, and it seems to be fairly consequent.
It’s a start. 🙂

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 good” obviously means “good”, but how did she get there?
Here’s my theory: to her, “pas bon” is not composed of the negation “pas” and the adjective “bon”, but is a word that stands by itself, maybe “pabon” that means “bad”. So a more accurate translation of “pas pas bon” would be “not bad”.

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 get the desired result. But “recently, “coussin” has replaced “ki” for “Kissen” (cushion or pillow).

A cow is still either a “vache” or a “Kuh”, though I’m not sure what that depends on. The other day she was sitting on the sofa and suddenly requested a plush cow sitting on the shelf, then hugged her saying “câlin kuh”, but a bit later she hugged her again saying “câlin vache”.

Her daddy reports the other morning she looked at the list of a series picture books at the end of one book of the series and pointed to the cover image of another she owns, asking “Wo ist die da?” (She doesn’t distinguish articles yet, the correct sentence would be “Wo ist das da?”.) That would be her first full German sentence, I’d like to hear it myself.

Here’s hoping that our upcoming stay with Oma will activate her passive German vocabulary. That would be the best Christmas present I could wish for. 🙂

The obvious answer is yes.

In a recent study of monolingual French infants aged 20 months, researchers introduced them to new words in a foreign language in an attempt to find out if and how easily they would assimilate them.

They came to the conclusion that the results obtained in the study show that 20-months-old infants can easily and quickly learn words in a new language and this even with a limited exposure to that language, proving that a flexibility on the phonological level still exists after the one-year threshold established in previous studies.

The full study can be consulted here (pdf, English). A summary in French can be found here.

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 dire fromage !”

“Gros naze !”

Ensuite, la petite est sur le chemin de retour à la maison avec son papa. À un endroit qu’ils passent tous les jours, il y a quasiment tout le temps une flaque d’eau. Notre fille, qui adore l’eau, ne manque pas de la remarquer. Or, ce jour-là, quelque chose a change :

“Ah non ! Il n’y a pas de l’eau !”

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 talks.
Yesterday morning she was singing as we walked to the nanny’s, so I put my MP3 player into her hands.

singing