Just some things I wanted to take note of before I forget again.

Recently I've noticed that Yannick seems to use the German word 'jetzt' ('now') in English sentences. I'm trying to tell him the proper sentence every time this happens, so hopefully at some point 'now' will have made it into his memory.

Yannick is often saying in German 'ich meane' (as in English 'I mean'). Proper German would be 'ich meine'. So he maintains the right verb declination but uses the English word, quite funny.

Even though there are plenty of words in German and English that sound similar, Yannick is not confused at all by words that sound the same in both languages but actually mean something different. In a German book we came across an 'Igel' which means hedgehog. Then a little while later he learned the English word 'eagle' which is pronounced the same way. Even though he had heard the word 'hedgehog' before he was thinking for a short while we were talking about the German hedgehog but as soon as I explained that this was a bird called 'Adler' in German there was no more confusion.

He's also becoming a right little translator. Sometimes when I don't remember a word out of an area that he knows quite well (like farm words) I'm now taking to asking him to help me, and more often than not he can do that. It's quite intriguing. It seems he has a very good concept of the two languages being separate entities, rather than muddling everything up and trying another word in the same language of the word I asked him to translate.

Sometimes he doesn't seem to know certain words or phrases for his games in one language or maybe simply remembers something from playing in pre-school and switches to the other language there and then: 'Das Auto soll hier lang fahren. It's going over a big branch and it's breaking the gate. Brrrrm.' He'll stay with the other language for a little while until I or Frank say something again in German. Sometimes we go along speaking English for a while but usually I'm trying nowadays to switch back to German quite quickly so that we don't fall into bad habits and only speak English at home at some point. That would totally defeat the object of raising my child with two languages. The trouble with this is that both Frank and I sometimes don't even notice which language we are speaking as we switch just like Yannick when a phrase in one of our two languages seems more suitable for what we want to express. It must be quite weird to listen to the three of us at times!

So what's going on you must be wondering. Is he speaking English now? Yes, he is!

Yannick has been growing up in the UK in a German speaking family. The first two and a half years of his life, Frank and I only spoke German to him when we were on our own. I would occasionally say something in English but more by accident when in English speaking company. We have a number of English friends so we were never in short supply of an English language environment with other children. I also took Yannick to Sing and Sign (baby signing) and later Jo Jingles (structured music intro). We started Sing and Sign when he was eight months old and far from speaking any language. He quickly picked up the most important signs to him, 'eat' and 'drink'. Other signs followed (including 'more' and 'bird') but as they weren't quite so important they took some time. At 18 months Yannick all of sudden had a speaking explosion, within a couple of weeks he knew and used loads of words (see here for my notes at the time). At his second birthday he spoke quite well but not complete sentences yet. This all developed over the twelve months and his German is just great. Of course there are some things that are not quite right yet, but mostly I only notice a wrong form of a verb in past perfect tense or similar. Sometimes he struggled to put all of what he wanted to say into one sentence and they got ridiculously long and warped, but it was just great to hear how much he was interested in communicating his thoughts. So far so good.

At two and a half I started to speak to Yannick in English when we were playing and reading as I wanted to increase his confidence. I knew he understood a lot as he often would comment on a situation in German to me after listening in to other people's and children's conversations. But he was just not speaking. Slowly, slowly he started to speak back to me. At age three he started pre-school, prepared with the most important things to say, and off he went. From the first week I noticed changes in the way he was using English and while he's not quite as fluent as in German, he's definitely confident to speak now. Sometimes we get funny translations and you notice that German is his first language. For example he still says 'I know that not' or 'I want that not' which is literally translated from German word order. But at the same time he comes out with English songs and typical phrases that he heard over and over in his books. When I ask him what a word means in English he can almost always tell me in German. It's just incredible. Soon he'll be like a native speaker!

We had a nice word a while ago, it was a fusion of 'mechanic' and 'Mechaniker'. What we got was 'mexicaniker'. There were more funny words but I can't remember a thing right now. Have to activate my memory one of these days…

He must have had one. There were these very disturbed and short nights just a short while back and now the child is asking 'why?' and 'why?' every five seconds it seems. In addition to that we also get a lot of 'I want to do that' which we didn't have so much before. A different child.

We are trying to reflect some of the why questions back to Yannick and I think he's slowly realising that he can answer some of them himself. But the constant 'whys' are really getting to me, approximately after 'why' number twenty I can't help but start asking back 'why not?'.

It's so weird, as if he's only just realised that the word 'why' exists. He used to ask 'what's that' and 'how does this work', 'what does this do' and those questions were fine as you got different angles to explain something that way. The 'why' questions seem to be replacing all of those and more. They always seem to be very wide and often we have to ask back simply to find out what exactly he's asking about. Then you are half way through explaining and boom, the next 'why'. Argh.

The 'I want to do that' is a lot less troublesome as I was always hoping for some more initiative from his side on certain things. Now for example he's showing some interest in putting his own shoes on which is good. Sadly, eating doesn't seem to fall under this category. If I want him to eat more than his limited level of patience makes him, I still have to feed him. He's just bored of eating after five minutes and always needs a toy to keep him at the table. It doesn't matter much whether he really likes something or not, food is just not that important.

However, Yannick's English is really coming on now. We were at a friend's place today and he was asking her question about toys which he never did like that before. It's so nice to see how confident he is getting in speaking in his second language. Soon he'll be like a native speaker and outdo me easily!

After a conversation with a mummy friend about how many words her daughter knows I started noting down all the words and signs Yannick comes out with. Not to compete, simply because I like to make lists for a start and I was also interested in keeping this information. If I'd waited any longer, I would have forgotten.

I was astonished! I got together a list of 40 different things (words, animals sounds, and signs) almost immediately and then the following day another 20 or so came up, it was just amazing. Some words are always signed, some are done by sign and word, and most are nowadays simply spoken words. He learned almost all of this during the last two months! In addition he's coming out with new things every day, trying to repeat words I say as well. OK, not everybody would know what he's saying as it's still pronounced in his baby way, but I know exactly what he's on about in about 95% of all cases, simply by context and paying close attention.

I told our Sing & Sign teacher today how much he communicates and she was well impressed as apparently for a child of this age an average of 10 words is expected by the health visitors. We talked about this as our teacher was wondering about his command of English as he always seems to know what she wants of him. We are only speaking German at home so that's a very legitimate question. Well, he's watched those English language Sing & Sign DVDs up and down almost every day (one per day!), so something is getting stuck in his little head. He even started to say bye bye now (instead of the German version, tschüß). The weird thing is that Yannick didn't seem to take in much of the signs (and words) at all before well into the second season of the Sing & Sign classes, and now it's all happening at once.

I love this speaking thing, it's so much fun!!!

I've just read two blog posts about baby talk (Mama on Undercover in Japan and Words and things on The Smell of Little Pong) and have to add my own experiences to that.

Not much has changed since my last and last but one posts that mentioned Yannick's speech development. He is still signing loads but not really talking. Only recently we've had a new addition to his repertoire of sounds which is 'oo oo'. This stands for 'woof woof' and comes out in addition to the sign every time we see a dog. He also tried to copy the sound of a ship on one of his toys which is a bit like 'hoot hoot', and guess what it sounds like when Yannick does the sound? Correct, it's 'oo oo'! In addition to these, he knows that anything dirty is 'bebe!' (just a German sound we do, in German I would spell it 'bähbäh!) and as this is an easy one we often get to hear that whenever he checks out the rubbish bin in the kitchen.

Yannick definitely understands a lot. I notice that when I ask him about where certain items are. If I ask him in the morning where his trousers, socks, or t-shirt are, he'll get them for me. He knows various body parts and other items that are important in his life, like wooden car, fire engine, motorbike, etc. He understands when I say no and often starts shaking his head in anticipation when he wants something that he is not usually allowed to have. Very fun to watch.

Yannick also seems to have understood that apart from signing there are two other languages in his life, German and English. He is a lot more talkative when there are more German speakers around and goes relatively quiet when I take him to an English language environment.

Back to talking. Even though Yannick is able to say 'mama' he has not copped on to the fact that he could call me with that. When we ask him where Papa (German for daddy) is, he usually points at Frank, but when we ask him about Mama, he quite often ignores the question. Maybe he's smart and thinks, why are they asking me that, she's right here, you stupid people, but to be honest I don't think he's got the connection quite yet.

And then we have 'dada'. Everybody keeps telling me that he can say daddy, *sigh*, but NO, he can't. As I just mentioned, in German we say Papa and he has never ever done that combination of sounds. The closest he got so far was 'baba' or 'bap', but these also don't seem to mean much, he's just practising. If anything da would mean there in German. However, when pointing at things we just get 'ah ah'.

As far as I can tell, 'baba', 'mama', 'yaya', and 'dada' are simply the sounds that come easiest to the little ones. I think all babies go through the same stages in sound development, and it's only the cultural/mother tongue influence that assigns the meaning to this babbling. If the baby is clued in he or she will pick up quickly what we think they are saying, but some don't… Usually Yannick gets away with 'ah ah' and pointing as we react very quickly to what he wants, so even for things where he knows the signs (like drink and eat) he doesn't have to make too much of an effort to get what he wants. Maybe we are simply too attentive?