Ich freue mich immer, wenn ich neue Initiativen zur Zwei- oder Mehrsprachigkeit sehe. In Bremen gibt es seit kurzem einen deutsch-chinesischen Kindergarten mit Krippe, Drachenkinder e.V.
Intressant zu lesen ist das Infoblatt “Immersionslernen” (PDF) auf der Website des Vereins, nicht nur für Deutsch-Chinesisch.
I might or might not have mentioned that our girl, when she’s in the right mood, will repeat words after us. With one exception: If she already has a word for something (like “mau” for “cat”), she won’t say “cat”, however often we say it. She’ll stick with “mau”.
So I guess her onomatopoeia should count as words. And if they do, then she has said her first two-word sentences:
“brrrm papa” translates as “(There is) daddy’s car.” And “wawa caca” means “(There is) dog poo” (on the earth around the trees on the sidewalk – I told her that to her the day before she made that utterance, to explain why she shouldn’t walk through there).
Having just met another German-French raised child who is half a year older than her and speaks in full sentences and reasons, I’m very curious to see what comes next. Watch this space.
Ich bin neulich auf ein paar interessante Artikel gestoßen:
Kindergarten und école maternelle – ein taz-Artikel
Über Sinn und Unsinn von Muttersprachlern als Fremdsprachenlehrer
Einfach mal lesen…
We’re back from a visit with the German granny (Oma), where our little girl had a lot to say. Here’s a sample of what she told her Oma as they were looking at the pictures of a fairy tales book together:
As our little girl is closing in on her second birthday, I can’t help comparing her language skills to those of her peers.
Her daddy told me the other day about his colleague’s girl (two months younger) who put her sleeping bag on her parents’ bed and declared “Moi dodo là.” That’s a full sentence, including a personal pronoun!
Yes, I know, children who are raised in a bilingual environment tend to start talking later than their peers. Still, I’m so impatient.
Which brings me to my topic. When she has the choice between two words for the things she wants, one provided by mommy (German) and one provided by Daddy (French), she’ll retain the one that’s easier to pronounce. Which is the French one most of the time.
Don’t believe me? Let me give you some examples:
And the list goes on…
I’m thankful for neutral words like banana (Banane/banane) and the occasional German trump such as cheese (Käse/fromage).
Following on the heels on my post from earlier this week reporting the first bilingual expression of our little girl, yesterday I did my first bilingual correction.
We were on the phone with my mom. That is to say, I was on the phone with the loudspeaker on, and my daughter was listening. She said a few “words” to Oma, and when the time came to say good-bye, I asked “Sagst du tschüß zu Oma?” She dutifully waved at the phone, and I dutifully asked her again to say tschüß.
“Au-voir!”
“Nein, zu Oma sagst du tschüß!”
“Tschü-tschüß!”
She still says tschüß to her (French) daddy, and we will see what she says to her (equally French) child-minder.
I proudly announce that our girl is now officially bilingual: Today she said for the first time a word in French that she already says in German.
Which one? Good-bye.
That is to say, “aurvoir” (still contracted) after “tschü-tschüß” about two months ago.
With the handful of recognisable words she says, it seems to me that she uses the easier language (“encore” and not “nochmal”, “Käse” and not “fromage” etc.). I’ll keep my ears open.
How both diaper and clock/watch ended up as “ka-ka” is beyond me, though…
Today we went to see a child-minder because our child-minder is on sick leave. The lady is already looking after a little boy three months younger than our girl. We stayed for a while and the two of them played. There was a little tent in the room, and they had been in and out of it already. Now the boy was sitting beside the opening and my girl took his hand and tried to tow him inside. He didn’t budge. Then she went inside and pulled at his hand again. No success.
Then she pointed first at outside, then at inside the tent. If that message wasn’t clear…
It’s always nice when the subject gets positive treatment in the mainstream media.
Here is a recent article from the NY TImes / International Herald Tribune titled “Why Bilinguals are Smarter – The Benefits of Bilingualism”.
This weekend I discovered that sometimes a lesson in bilingualism doesn’t need more than a little goodwill and basic (and I mean very basic) muscial skills.
You see, our little girl is the proud owner of a xylophone – and the only tune I can play on it is “Alle meine Entchen”. There might be more variety if I had the in-between notes (the black keys on a piano). Still, as I hinted above, this was sufficient becasue my girl liked it and kept asking me to play it again. And again. And again. In French. And I would repeated “again?” again and again and again. In German.
And she nodded and made her unilingual “yes” sound.
I don’t expect her to say it in German any time soon because “nochmal” is much harder to pronounce than “encore” (or “cor” as her current version goes), but I think she’s getting the message that both mean the same. And that’s what bilingualism is all about at this stage, right?
Bilingual childraising under the sign of the Moo
Buchvorstellung language language acquisition lesen minority language mixing languages multilingual reading & writing Sprache weaker language