baby speak

Max is speaking! Well, not really. But he did make what could almost be classified as a sentence. He said, "bébé là". It is in French, but that's ok. He's speaking.

In the past week or so, he's said a couple of words in English. What's most interesting is that when the word comes out of his mouth, it's not baby babble but the full word with the proper pronunciation. Up. Baby. Cat. He said them all clear as a bell.

Meanwhile, Suzanne has gotten a lot of grandma time which has done her English lots of good. She seemed to have worked out some of the fossilized franglais-isms. For instance, she actually began using the possessive form her instead of the pronoun she which is something I can't seem to correct. She's also picked up some expressions from my mother like, "you're a good chooser". However, after only 3 days back at school, Suzanne has begun slipping in a little more French...

Reading François Grosjean's book Bilingual: Life and Reality has been extremely insightful, especially the chapter on code-switching and borrowing. It has really given me perspective on Suzanne's way of speaking - and even my own! - because it places the bilingual in a normal every day context.