Das Buch zur zweisprachigen Kindererziehung von Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer (www.enfantsbilingues.com und www.cafebilingue.com) ist auch auf Deutsch erschienen, und der Verlag bietet auf seiner Website eine Leseprobe mit der Einleitung und dem ersten Kapitel zum Download an (PDF ca. 660kb). Ich empfehle die Lektüre zumindest dieser insgesamt zehn Seiten als Einführung ins Thema. Zum Weiterlesen gibt’s das […]

Deutschsprachige Artikel zu dem Thema finde ich nicht so häufig, aber hier ist einer, in der Form eines Interviews mit einer Forscherin des Babysprachlabors an der Universität Konstanz: “Mehrsprachigkeit hat positive Effekte”

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 […]

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 […]

I’ve often thought about mixing. I don’t mean a young child mixing, I mean a bilingual adult mixing. The other day I was reading “Mit zwei Sprachen groß werden” by German author Elke Montanari (a book I recommend as an introduction for anyone newly confronted with the subject), and what she had to say got […]

You know these little “prisons” whre you put your baby when it starts moving around? They are called “playpen” in English, which makes sense, since the baby will play there (if you put some toys in). In German they are called “Laufstall”, “walking stable”, which makes a lot less sense because that’s exactly what they […]

Today we took our now ten-months-old girl to the Laboratoire Psychologique de la Perception at Paris V – Descartes University. She got to listen to a two-syllable sound (“ka-ba”) that was pronounced with different stresses, and by German and French native speakers. A light would blink on her left or right, and when she looked […]

The other night, Baby attempted what Daddy had already qualified as “bêtise” the week before – pulling the plug from her bathtub, effectively inundating our bathroom. This time we had a pail underneath, but still Daddy told her in a stern voice “Non!” Since last week I’d broken down laughing, I hurried to add my […]

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 […]

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 […]