At nine months and a few days, it is still too early to look for bilingual expression, obviously. But what about bilingual comprehension?

Last week, our little girl started waving “goodbye” to me when I left her at the nanny’s. The first time it was the situation that prompted her action, or at least that’s how I interpret it: We were standing at the elevator, same as every morning, and I was stepping inside, when she suddenly began to wave her arm. The next day, while still in the nanny’s apartment, no “Let’s say goodbye to mommy” (me, in German) didn’t prompt any reaction. Once at the elevator, however, it did.

A few days later, we were leaving while Daddy was still in the bedroom. (Lucky him! Usually he leaves well before we do.) I said “Let’s say goodbye to Daddy”, and my little girl waved to him. This in an unusual situation, and not even standing by an open door or elevator, leading me to conclude that she was prompted by the words.

Now she starts waving goodbye to me even when we are still in the nanny’s  apartment with the front door closed. And the nanny told me that she waved goodbye to her daughter when the nanny asked her to do so.

What I am getting at? Well, you need to remember that I always speak German to my baby whereas the nanny addresses her exclusively in French. The nanny will say “dis au revoir”, while I say “sag tschüß”. In both cases, she waves her arm.

There is a lot of writing about linguistic interference in bilingual(-to-be) children, but it also occurs in parents. The other day, another German mom told me she got lost on the way to meeting me. We spoke German, obviously, and she said she had “sich verloren”. In French, the correct term is “se perdre”, literally “to lose yourself”, whereas in German we have a specific term, “sich verlaufen” (“laufen” being “to walk” or “to go” according to circumstances). If you lose yourself while driving, it’s “sich verfahren” (“fahren” meaning “to drive”). I guess there could even be a “sich verfliegen” for pilots losing their way in the skies.

My point is, we are all subject to interference, not only kids.

Just my five cents for today.

…”ba-ba”.

Listen to her here.

This time I didn’t even look for German words starting with “ba-” since daddy just gave me “-teau” again.

Now it won’t be long before she calls him “pa-pa” (“daddy” in both our languages).

Sadly, the “m” sound is trickier 🙁

The other day, through a discussion on a networking site, I came across this:

Speaking in tongues

A mother in Lebanon tells of her children mixing three languages (English, French and Arabic) in a very peculiar way that has her and her husband scratching their heads.

I’d be curious to know what has become of those kids since.

Does “gaga” count as a word? If so, our baby girl has started speaking.

Listen to her!

I tried to think of German words beginning with “ga-” that she might have been attempting to say. Here is what I came up with:

• Gartenschlauch
• Garage
• Garnitur
• Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Then I asked Daddy which French words began with “ga-“:

• “-teau” he replied.

That must be it then 😉

Über eine Nachricht in einem Netzwerk kam ich zu diesem Post des Blogs “SprachenNetz”:

Wie lernen Kleinkinder Fremdsprachen?

Der Artikel beschreibt einen ähnlichen Versuch wie den, an dem wir teilgenommen haben:

Im Forschungslabor „WortSchatzinsel“ am Georg-Elias-Müller Institut für Psychologie sehen die Kinder während des Versuchs auf einem großen Bildschirm Bilder und kurze Filme, gleichzeitig werden Wörter und Sätze über Lautsprecher eingespielt. Eine Kamera hält währenddessen die Augenbewegungen des Kindes fest. Aus den Blickbewegungen können die Wissenschaftler anschließend Rückschlüsse ziehen auf die kognitiven Prozesse bei der Sprachverarbeitung.

Wortschatzinsel an der Universität Göttingen

The research student of the LSCP (see my post from Dec. 18, 2010) gave me the link to an article about research on cognitive abilities in seven-month-old infants, a study that compared monolingual and bilingual babies:

Cognitive gains in seven-month-old bilingual infants

In a nutshell, the article describes a series of experiments that had monolingual and bilingual babies learn a rule and then changed that rule. Monolingual babies had more trouble adjusting to the new rule than bilingual babies.

The authors conclude that the cognitive abilities bilingual babies develop even in the preverbal phase (i.e. before they start to talk) and that are necessary to block out (inhibit) one language while using the other, facilitates the adaptation to changing rules.

I wonder how that applies in the daily life of my little girl who, by the way, just turned seven months old today.

As a postscriptum to my post of almost a year ago (Jan. 4, 2010), here is another article on newborn babies crying differently according to their mother tongue – or at least the language they heard while in their mother’s womb:

BBC article

This article on the BBC wesite contains a sound sample where the difference is very pronounced.

A few weeks ago, we received a letter from the “Laboratoire des Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistiques” asking if we would let our baby participate in a study about language acquisition. They were looking for babies between 4½ and 5½ months.
Last Saturday morning we entered a cramped room on the basement level of my maternity hospital where a post-graduate research student welcomed us and explained the experiment. A few minutes later, my little girl and I sat in a soundproof room, looking at a screen. My baby was being filmed, I was wearing soundproof headphones so that my reaction to the sounds she would hear would not influence her.
Then we watched in turns cartoon scenes and an unmoving circle on the screen, while two syllables were being played. I didn’t watch for her reaction, but Daddy who was seeing the camera image, later told me she’d followed the cartoons but got quickly bored whenever the circle came to the screen. This, the researcher had told us, was intentional, measuring her interest.
The whole experiment lasted eight minutes, and if our baby had started crying, it would have been stopped at once. But I’m proud to say she was extremely cooperative. (Hey, she got to watch cartoons!)
We will receive more information about the study when it is finished. I am very much looking forward to it.
Did you know that at five months, a baby already knows that one plus one equals two? I didn’t.

I’m used to being the designated interpreter whenver we’re around my family or my old friends, few of whom speak French. Whether my dad comes visiting, or we stay for Christmas at my mom’s, I’m always glad when I make it through the days without mixing up languages. I don’t mean mixing them up in a sentence, but speaking the wrong language to the wrong person. It usually happens at least once, mostly when I’m tired.
So I was wondering what it would be like with the baby, juggling two languages at home, day in, day out. I worried that I would end up speaking French to her, not only out of confusion, but also out of habit – I do speak French all day long, after all. Had nine months talking to my belly prepared me?

I’m three and a half months into life with the baby now, and I am happy to report I hardly ever get confused. I don’t even have to think consciously: as soon as I address my baby, I speak German.
And since tiredness is a permanent condition for me now, I believe I’ve definitely got used to it. 🙂

Now let’s hope baby gets used to doing the same when her turn comes to speak up.

Oh, a related info on the subject: In a recent interview with the French magazine Parents, Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer, author of “Le défi des enfants bilingues” and creator of the Café Bilingue, said it is not indispensable to stick strictly to OPOL as long as you expose the child as much as possible to both languages (Parents October 2010, page 77).