My daughter (almost 11 now) and her friends from her school with a dual bilingual program (French-English and French-German) have managed to surprise me once more: at a recent birthday party, they sang Happy birthday not in their three school languages, not in four langauges as they already did five years ago, but in five […]

Tonight, my daughter (almost 8½ now) was doing her daily reading in German from the first Harry Potter book. I try not to interrupt her all the time to correct, but occasionally I do. This time, apparently, it was too often, for she told me: “Mama, korrigiere mich, aber mach da nicht so einen Käse […]

Two days ago, we unintentionally created a joke that you need 3 languages to understand. Here is what happened: My now 7-year-old daughter was practising looking up words in her new German elementary school dictionary. As she was looking for Fledermaus, she came across a word she didn’t know, and asked me: “Flattratte?” It’s a […]

For her 6th birthday party (advanced due to the early start of the school holidays), my daughter invited six classmates – representing a stunning seven nationalities. I was prepared for that, witness the cake: What I was not prepared for was the guests singing Happy Birthday in not two,  not three, but four languages, thanks […]

Today, we were on the Métro 7 on our way to school, when my daughter asked at which station we were. I told her, and we looked at the métro map, and I read the names of all the stations we had passed or would pass. One of them is called Place Monge. Her: “Das […]

Yesterday, my 5-year-old daughter and her German grandma (Oma) settled down to watch a Garfield cartoon. My daughter told Oma: “If Garfield is in French, you can learn French!” Then the opening sequence finished and a voice announced the title of the episode. My daughter’s eyes opened wide and she exclaimed: “It’s in German!” Well, […]

Two weeks ago, on Easter weekend, my family accompanied me to Amsterdam, where I attended a conference. They spent the weekend with the family of another attendee, whose daughter is two years older than mine. They live in Germany, but her mother is English. The two girls had a great time, chatting away in German […]

Two nights ago, I read my 4-year-old daughter a new book from the Conni series (for the second time). Afterwards, she chose the same book for Daddy’s bedtime story. Whenever she chooses a German book for him, he tells the story by the images, which works well for this series. However, some details mentioned in […]

This afternoon, my daughter and I went to the playground with her friend E. and her mother. I had only found out recently that the mother is anglophone, and so of course I chatted her up on the subject. At some point, the girls came to see us. E. wanted something from her mother who […]

Yesterday we were getting into the car, when Dad told our almost-4-year-old daughter to put something into the trunk, “le coffre”. When she replied, however, she used the word suitcase, “la valise” instead. This is what I think happened: French le coffre – the trunk – is a false friend to German der Koffer – […]