Comments on: perfectly formed

By: Rene Smit

Rene Smit — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 09:07:54 +0000

You might find the research of Anne Cutler very interesting here and here Googling on "Anne Cutler" gives you hours of reading....

By: Mancunian lass

Mancunian lass — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 09:49:15 +0000

When I put my 18 month old daughter to bed, sometimes instead of singing “Mary had a little lamb”, I change it to “Marie avait un petit agneau” – she finds this hilarious, for some reason.

By: Jean

Jean — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 09:14:57 +0000

I lived in France with a 3-year-old who used to go into regular bedtime spasms of obsessive rage because she didn’t like my pronunciation of Blondine in her favourite bedtime story (I think my French accent is pretty good, but the ‘on’ before a consonant is one sound I guess I can’t quite make like a native). Following many tantrums on her side and increasing wounded annoyance on mine, I managed to ‘lose’ the book and she found a new obsession which I could pronounce better.

By: Koko Mongeot

Koko Mongeot — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 03:09:50 +0000

Sigh…I remember when our son was that age. We had such great hopes of him speaking many languages (including French, Spanish & Italian) like his papa.

Instead, we were pleasantly surprised with an anglo grammar nazi genius who excels at speaking “geek”!

Look forward to your future, our 17 year-old is constantly korrecting our inglish!

By: Flare

Flare — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:44:54 +0000

It has already happened for a child to correct my french. It’s weird and at the same time they just do it and don’t act like anything has happened. THey don’t tell you that it’s cute that you make mistakes like that because you are foriegn, etc… so I can accept it. I don’t know how it will feel when Tadpole starts to do this… but I can imagine how jealous you feel about her ease with the French language. I feel the same way being a later bloomer with the French language, too.

As for the bebe cats, CUTE! I think we may be intrested… we have one cat who’s terribly lonely when we’re at work.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 18:43:13 +0000

Having learnt French from the age of 7. So, I get corrected occasionally. I do like to speak Frnch, but not too easy when you live in London…

By: Parkin Pig

Parkin Pig — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 12:05:28 +0000

Me (15 years in France): “Tu ne peux pas aller Ã la piscine aujourd’hui parce que l’eau est trop froid”
Daughter(Born in France 13 years ago): “Froide, papa!”
This has been going on since she was 3.
Your time will come.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:24:37 +0000

I always remember picking my kids up from the Garderie in Brussels, maybe about three months after we had moved there, and one of the teachers asking in French of my eldest son, all of six at the time, if he knew where something was, and watching him almost instantly point and say “Oui, il est la” and being dumbstruck by the fact that in that short time he had understood and responded to something in a foreign language that it would have taken me longer to think about and decipher after having gone through five years of learning the language at school. Kids just seem to absorb these things by nature, and somehow we as adults have forgotten how to.

By: mary

mary — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 10:34:15 +0000

just to add another comment
i recently set up ‘canalsat’(french satelite tv)as they have BBC prime and i thought this would be great for my kid’s to hear other English speakers,rather than just me
So my little India of 3 and a half happily sings along to Balamory and seems to understand most of it,despite the strong scottish accent….so far so good!
Ben,9,has been watching all sorts of ‘educational’ stuff,so i thought!!!
He said to my Mum on the phone the other day ‘INNIT’!!
and something else that obviously wasn’t from me as i haven’t ‘lived my language’for 14 years now!!
My mother was shocked!!(she’s from surbiton!!) and Ben just told her that he had heard the words from the BBC!
MY dear mother told him to tell me not to watch Eastenders!!!
So much for the BBC!!!
hee!hee!

By: Steph

Steph — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 07:22:02 +0000

Yes, I remember correcting my father’s le/la mistakes. His French definitely did improve over my childhood — though I’m not sure how much credit I should take for it.