Gabi: Mama, know what?
Mama: What, baby?
Gabi: I'm soooo cute!
Here's our sweet baby having a little chat with her Mama. She'd just gotten up that morning and was awake and talking to us. I was previously aware of the fact that little babies make cute little baby noises, but it's really a different experience entirely to hear them every morning when you wake up.
We're planning on teaching little Gabi to be bilingual. Mama is teaching her English, and I'm going to attempt to teach her German. I'm not completely fluent in German, but I feel comfortable enough with it that I think I can keep up with a little baby. These first six months are supposed to be the most critical for helping her figure out which phonoemes belong together.
I think the plan is for each of us to use our language exclusively... at least when talking to her. That way, she can distinguish the two languages early on. When people look at language development in young children, it's often noted that they will mix the two languages, which some view as a sign that they're confused. Really, they usually figure out the difference, even if it's much later in life. Having the distinction be as evident as "I speak to Mama in English and Papa in German" serves to more or less eliminate this problem... or so I've been assured by my psychology-savvy wife.
Aside from the fact that language is just cool, there seem to be so many advantages to bilingualism, that we really want to give our daughter a chance to have those advantages. It's not that we just want her to have better grades in English or that we want her to have a grounding in metalinguistic analysis. Knowing more than one language gives a concrete way of understanding that there is more than one way to view the same concept, and this is a great way for us to give her a fuller understanding of the way the world works. So wish us luck on this enterprise, because it promises to be a unique challenge.
3 comments:
I really don't like this picture of me. Afterall, I just woke up and Michael handed me a baby before I even got out of bed, so my hair is most definitely all scraggly. However, this is an adorable picture of our little Gabi talking to us. I suppose this is the first of many times I will allow embarassing pictures of myself to be publicized in order to show off how cute my daughter is. Whenever we had family portraits when I was growing up, none of the shots we took would have all six of us looking at the camera with an appropriately happy expression... so my mom would end up selecting a pose where she did not like the way she looked in order to have her kids all look nice in the picture. Ah, such sacrifices of motherhood. But it is well worth it to have such an adorable baby!
I stumbled across your blog. Your baby is adorable.
Hey Guys,
Good luck with the bilingual thing, I hope Gabi catches on. You're right that it might take her longer to develop language skills though. My grandma grew up in a house where her parents spoke german and her three older sisters spoke english. As a result, my grandma didn't speak till she was 3 when her parents finally decided they should speak english exclusively so as not to confuse my grandma. :)
Perhaps with only 2 people talking to her though it will be easier to figure out- and she looks like a smartie!
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