We always do try and make our daughter aware that Papa and Maman are speaking two different languages (and other people might speak other languages too). But of course saying Papa speaks Portuguese and her little neighbour speaks French means nothing to a two-year old.
LJ is learning to count and loved counting things at the minute. Often at the minute her counting is something like:
seis, dois, três, vier, fünf, três!or
deux, trois, quatre, cinco!Whenever we hear something of the sort, we go: Papa says: um, dois, três, etc... and Maman says: un, deux, trois, etc... Usually, she goes along and plays the game and even says the words before we do. Today, while we were walking she was talking about having eaten 3 raspberries. She then said:
Papa dit cinco.Ok, three is not cinco in Portuguese but she is aware that Papa and Maman say it differently. I corrected and reinforced that Papa says três and I say trois.
We also do this for other words and sometimes she brings it up herself without prompting. It might seem a little cumbersome and tiresome but we never force it, just add it here and there in passing.
Language awareness is something that comes around 3 years old, but understanding that there are more than one label for things or concepts is something young bilinguals excel at, so we might as well encourage it.
How do you encourage your young child to be aware that he is speaking more than one language? Do you ever explain explicitly to your child that mummy and daddy speak different languages? What little games do you play? I'd love to hear others' experiences.
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Add CommentWe play a game where we say words from German, English, French and Russian. The kids have to guess which language the word comes from. For English and German, we choose words they probably don't know - then it is about pronounciation, morphology, intonation... for example - Gesellschaft (the kids identify it as German first because of the ending with is common in denoting nouns such as Freundschaft, Mannschaft)...
Love to read the progress of your little one in her four languages.
When our older two were younger, we used to say "the way maman or papa speaks". Now they are a bit older (4 and 7) we use the right words, ie arbia, francais, allemand/deutsch, anglais/english.
Rachael
That sounds like fun.... I will keep that in mind for later!
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Merci!
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