adventures in language-learning

[moominmolly]

Background: N likes to make up French words. She's been doing this for a while, and she sounds very authoritative when talking to S: "That's bread. In French we say 'bee-SHAY'." The fake French words always sound kinda Frenchy, which is awesome. I've been reading her some French kids' books on and off since we went to Montreal in February, and now that she's obsessed with DORA THE EXPLORA, she's aware that all foreign languages aren't French. Now, two scenes from yesterday:

(1) We're at the park, swinging in the swings, and once I'm pushing Natalie high enough that she's about to fall out (the little thrill-seeker), she stops asking for more pushes and starts eavesdropping on the mom-and-kid next to us speaking Portuguese. I watch her listening more and more, trying to catch on, maybe getting some sounds here and there, and eventually she starts just ignoring what I'm saying and craning her head to listen. As the mom picked her kid up out of the swing, N looked at me and asked, "MOMMY, what IS that woman?!"

(2) Ever since our first French class on Monday, she's been asking me to sing the songs we sang in class and play the class CD, and she's been pulling the French books off the shelves and asking for them. So, last night, she was snuggled up in my arm in bed and we were reading a French kids' picture-vocab book before moving on to Pompon and his bike. Tonight, Natalie's decided that we're going to read it in the following way: she points at a picture and asks, "What's that?" to which I answer "le chien" (or whatever). Then:

N: "What's that?"
Me: "Le hot-dog".
N: *giggle*
Me: "No, seriously. It's le hot-dog in French."
N: *giggle* "No it's NOOOT! What's that?"
Me: *laugh* "Yes, really, it is! We say "hotdog" and in French they say le hot-dog!"
N: *giggle* "NO THEY DON'T!"

At that point I resorted to pointing out the words below the pictures, one in each language. We traced back over ice cream and la glace, apple and la pomme, and so on, until we got to hotdog and le hot-dog. She touched her fingers to the words and nodded, very small and gently.

I don't blame her for thinking I made that up. :)

Comments

[beowabbit]

Oooh, I’d love to talk about language with her sometime! Have you pointed out to her that English has borrowed words from French just like French borrows words (like hot-dog) from English?

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes words sound basically the same in different languages" is as complicated as we've gotten. :)