Wednesday 23 February 2011

Language and Laughter

Today turned out (most unexpectedly) to be filled with language and laughter.

I had decided to take Poppette to a local playgroup as she really is getting to want and need more and more stimulation. She is such a curious little girl. Now, I fully expected the playgroup to be full of other mum’s and little ones that we could mix and have fun with…. What I didn’t expect was for a good 50% of the children there to be being raised bilingually!

Seriously, there were English/Spanish, English/ French, English/ Danish, English/ Bengali and even one young girl being raised to be trilingual English/ Greek/ French. Wow.

The sounds of these beautiful and varied languages being spoken floated through the air and mixed with the laughter of the children and the parents. I spent a good deal of time chatting with a great French maman en français and we have arranged to meet up weekly for coffee. One week we will speak French, the next English. Her little boy is one month younger than Poppette so hopefully, over time they will inspire each other to be proud of their bilingual talents.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, that is such a variety of languages you all had today - how wonderful!

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  2. Hi there,

    here's hoping you can keep up your weekly playdates with the other French maman - with any luck, your kids will get used to using French as their language and Popette will have a budding French-speaker her own age in her life. That can play such a huge role when she begins to wonder 'why French?'

    Good luck with it all! My kids are a little older so we've been at it a while longer - yes, it's hard work, but also sooooo worth it when you hear Popette speak both languages!

    intrepidlybilingual.blogspot.com

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  3. YAY!!!! This post is SO inspiring!!!! How great that you found this woman to meet with regularly in both languages. And that you got to see all these people so dedicated to bi/multilingualism. Rock on!

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