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?

Remember our attempts at sign language? I thought it was exciting, but given our lack of using the signs, our little girl has mastered a grand total of two signs: all done and cheese.
Today I had a look at the website of Baby Signs® and found an article on signing in a biligual setting (PDF file) which I thought I#d share here.

Incidentally, today I took out this book and looked through it:

and went through the signs – which our little girl promptly signed back to me!
So maybe the right time to teach her some signs is now?

Our girl was sick and teething and coughing recently (yes, all at once), so when she wasn’t too keen on supper, we were indulgent.

On Monday night she was well again, but when I came home, Daddy was already engaged in the supper battle with her. Since sometimes she’ll eat with one of us but not the other, I sat down beside her. She looked at me, pulled her plate towards her, took the spoon, filled it, raised it, put it down again, pushed her plate away, looked at me and asked

“Käse?”

It’s been a while since I last ran after my girl with the mike. Not for lack of expression on her part, on the contrary, but rather for lack of mastery of said mike, which is integrated in my walkman, one of her favourite “tech toys”.
But this morning she was so engrossed in sorting the contents of a drawer of her clothes that she didn’t notice my hand with the walkman behind her back. Unfortunately that means you’ll have to turn up the volume a bit to hear her properly. Sorry.

jargon

“Rotes Licht und Grün,
das kann doch jeder leicht verstehn.
Bei Rot halt an und rühr dich nicht,
bei Grün, da darfst du gehn!”

Ich habe vor kurzem damit angefangen, unsere Kleine auf die rote bzw. grüne Ampel aufmerksam zu machen, wenn wir über die Straße gehen, und da kommt mir immer sofort das Lied aus Rolf Zuckowskis “Rolfs Schulweg Hitparade” in den Kopf.

Heute Abend nach der Gutenachtgeschichte habe ich ihr ihren “Wasserspeier” (den Luftbefeuchter) angestellt, der auch eine Nachtlichtfunktion hat, er leuchtet dann entweder blau oder rot. Ich hab ihn also auch angeknipst (blau), aber da kam Protest aus dem Gitterbett: “RRRRxchz!” (Oder so ähnlich.*) Verstummte augenblicklich, als ich auf Rot wechselte.

* Die zweite Silbe ihres geliebten Käses bereitet ihr auch Schwierigkeiten, meist hört es sich nach “Käxxchz” an. Obwohl ich zufälligerweise gerade heute ein vollständiges “Käse” gehört zu haben glaube. 🙂

Do you know the difference between German and French fire-fighters?
The German ones drive a big red truck with a blue light and a siren that goes “tatütata”, as any German child will tell you.
The French ones drive a big red truck with a blue light and a siren that goes “pim-pom-pim-pom”, as any French child will tell you.
Today my little girl and I passed a Paris fire brigade. I told her “Look, there’s a fire brigade. See their big red trucks?” (Only their tops were visible at the upper end of the garage doors.)
And my girl goes: “Tata-tata.”
German 1, French 0.
I think I’m not that bad a mommy after all. 🙂

It is a special moment when your child first says her name.
I still remember the midwife in the hospital telling me to call her by her name often so she would understand that it meant her. She was less than a day old then.
And now she’s 18 months and two weeks, and she says her name herself. 🙂

A friend, mother of four, told me just the other day that “every day she may surprise you with something new”.
And so she did.
I was on the phone with my mother today, with the loudspeaker on so my girl would hear her granny, and when we’d finished my mother said a few words directly to her granddaughter, then told us both goodbye (“tschüß”).
And there’s my girl saying “tschü” right next to the mike of the phone 🙂 She even did a repeat when I asked her to. All with granny’s ears wide open.

Oh, and after supper she requested “ka” from daddy, without the usual babysign. Maybe she doesn’t consider the sign necesssary any more now she knows the word?

So what’s next?

I knew I’d forgotten some in my list yesterday. And now I’m wondering what counts as a word – does it count if she repeats after us? In which case she said “va” for “vache” (cow in French) today and “go-go-go” when we say it when we want to get going.

But this one I’m sure of: “dodo” for “dormir” (French “to sleep”), the German equivalent would be “heia” but I never use it, I tend to talk about “going to bed” the adult way.
Am I missing out on toddler-friendly German vocabulary?