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 […]

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: […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Yesterday, at almost 29 months, was a good day for talking: two full sentences! From the shoulders of her dad: “Papa, je veux descendre.” (Daddy, I want to go down.) Discovering the still too-complicated-to-handle Crayola pens on a higher shelf: “Il est là mon crayon!” (That’s where my pen is!)

There are so many words and little sentences she says, but just try to switch on the recorder at the right moment! Whether it’s “papa, la lune” (pointing to the moon) or “pas chat” (not to be confused with “non pas ça”), the recorder is never close at hand. But last Thursday I handed it […]

We’re at the next stage, with sentences like “non pas ça” (no not that) becoming more frequent. Today we had a good laugh when Daddy threatened to do something at the count of three. He began, in a suitably menacing voice: “Un…” (one) Our little girl, who’s beginning to learn numbers: “Non, pas deux!” (No, […]