Tag Archives: French

Stream of Consciousness Sunday: The Mother Tongue Myth

Here is my 5 minute brain dump as part of this great series. Here goes …

I always knew that living in France BiP would obviously speak French. At some point. When she was a tiny baby people would ask me why I was only speaking to her in English. They would say that she would be disadvantaged at school if I only spoke English to her. I decided I’d not corrupt her French by speaking my bad French to her and instead persevere with English.

NOW she is almost 19m old and seems to speak a LOT more French than anything else. I’m stumped. We only speak English at home and until BiP was 14m old she was always with me – now she spends 9 hours a week surrounded only by French speakers.

She even translates everything I say:

I’ll say:

“Let’s go run your bath” – she replies “bain!”
“Let’s wash your hands” – she replies “main!”
“More?” – she says “encore!” (actually it’s more like “cor” but sounds nothing like more).

I’m still winning with words like car, cat, bye-bye, mummy and daddy!

Just yesterday she was running around yelling “Bag! Bag! Bag!” waving her hand in the air – I looked for the bag in question and saw she had found a ring in my jewelry box and was actually saying “bague” (ring in French)

Looks like I have a lot of baby French to learn!

Kinda blows the whole idea of a “MOTHER tongue”out of the water eh?

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This is my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

  • Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
  • Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
  • Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
  • Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
  • Link up your post at all.things.fadra.
  • Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Stream of Consciousness Sunday: Bilingual Baby Talk

stream-of-consciousness-sundayHere is my 5 minute brain dump as part of this great series. Here goes …

We only speak English at home. All BiP’s books are in English, all her DVD’s are in English but obviously when we are out and in French speaking company we speak French.

At 17months BiP is saying a few words. What has become apparent is that no matter what we try to drum into her as the word for this or that she will use the word that is most applicable and relevant to her.

DaddyinProvence wanted to be called “Papa” but to BiP he is “Daddy” and she says it so perfectly it makes my heart melt.

I want to be Mummy, not Mum, not Ma, MUMMY. And what does she call me? “Maman” which is the French for Mummy and I hate it. It drives me nuts.

Other words include “Ka-ka” which she uses for “Poo” – in France they say anything dirty is “ka-ka” and obviously poop is “ka-ka” also – I guess it’s easier for her to say that than Poo-Poo but it still gets me.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the fact that she will be bilingual without even realising but since I struggle so much with French I find it bizarre that MY baby is speaking French.

The other day she said “Encore” instead of again … I was taken aback.

English still has the upper hand so I still feel like I am in charge 🙂 She waves and calls “Bye-Bye” so beautifully that even the most hardcore French speakers will follow up their “Au Revoir” with “Bye-Bye”!

Anyone else experienced the same thing with their bilingual baby?

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This is my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

  • Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
  • Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
  • Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
  • Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
  • Link up your post at all.things.fadra.
  • Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.