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 […]

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 […]

Over the Christmas holidays at her German granny’s, our little girl (18 months old as of yesterday) has perfected the art of saying “yes” and “no” with her head. We have made some educated guesses at the syllables that she’s been uttering in the past two weeks: “ga-ga” – (rubber) duck – from “quack-quack” (sound […]

We know for sure our girl understands both our languages. Whether Mommy asks “Gib Mama ein Küsschen auf die Wange” or Daddy requests “Donne un bisou à papa”, she knows we are asking for a kiss on the cheek (and we usually get it, unless she’s crying or really occupied). For some reasons, her Dad […]

This is one of the funny things that happen with young children. Not mine, since she’s neither reading nor writing yet, but the 3½-year-old son of our friends. He started pre-school this autumn and already scribbles some letters. So when mommy and daddy recently said he should write a letter to Santa, he proudly wrote […]

Yesterday my little girl (16 months and counting) showed her caregiver just how good her comprehension is already: Both she and the other little girl (J, 12 months) at the caregiver’s were eating a piece of bread. That is, my girl had already finished hers and was eyeing that of little J. More than eyeing […]

We never tire of research, it seems. The “BabyLab – LBB” of the Laboratoire Psychologique de la Perception at Paris V – Descartes University still has us in the files (from this participation at 10 months), and this time they were looking for 16-months-old babies. So we went there for a study on the use […]

The other day my little girl did not like what I was doing (I think I was taking something away…), and I suddenly realised her “naiiiii” might well be “nein”. (Sadly, “no” is a word she hears often from me, i.e. in German.) On the same night I found myself wondering if the oft-repeated syllable […]

In the TED talks series, here is one on language acquisition that shows some quite fascinating findings. Watch it here.

This week I came across an article about a new university study on bilingual babies. The study, published online Aug. 17 in Journal of Phonetics, is the first to measure brain activity throughout infancy and relate it to language exposure and speaking ability. […] [The study’s observations] suggest[s] that the bilingual brain remains flexible to […]