4yo talking gibberish and insisting it's French..

[vladthedisorganised]

This has to be the weirdest problem I've had with DD. We're now on day 3 of the complete gibberish with very few English breaks. The point where she will speak English is to insist that I repeat a particular word back to her until I speak it 'properly'.
An extra dimension is added by her insistence that she's speaking French. Now, I lived in France for a few years, taught French at secondary level and all in all, my French is pretty good. So an exchange like this is very tiring..

DD - Grkrash fitlu akraaadi!
Me - ?
DD - Do you know the French for 'teeth'?
Me - Yes, it's "les dents".
DD - No it isn't, it's 'yrkaalodomee'
Me - Oh really?
DD - Now, repeat after me - 'notlaaroodlameeri'
Me - So 'notlaaroodlameeri' means 'teeth', does it?
DD - No! You're not saying it right! In France, they say 'bonalakacherd'.
Me - Or 'les dents'
DD - Vitlaa meerk laamidri skremoo!
Me -

Should I resign myself to having a Klingon in the house for the foreseeable future? I've heard about siblings having a 'secret language' between them but DD is an only..

I'd go all Phoebe on her I'm afraid.

Hahahahaha, I think that's hilarious! In her mind French and Gobbledegook probably sound exactly the same so bravo her for declaring herself fluent!! I can't attest to having any relevant experience but I'd probably just go along with the joke until she gets bored of it.

At that age, my DS believed that gibberish was the language of Gibraltar

My 4yo DD insists that anyone speaking ANY foreign language to or near her needs to "stop speaking irish" because she's only learnt a few words at nursery so far :o
All sounds like gibberish to them at that age

My 2yo DS is currently doing this and insisting it's Chinese. This is especially maddening as he does it at nursery, and they seem to believe him! We wre congratulated on his amazing progress in Mandarin when we picked him up last week. Still, it's good to know he's not the only one.

I have no advice but I did this when I was a child insisting that I spoke French and that my mum needs to pay attention :)

My dd (almost 4yo) talks her own language all the time. She knows a few words in various real foreign languages and these are peppered into the gibberish too! It seems to amuse her.

Ds has watched every episode of the Lingo Show and went through a phase of claiming he could speak Urdu and Welsh (the two languages on it that I didn't know at all). I remember a day of telling him if hewasn't going to speak English or sign, I was going to use German all day. After about an hour he was back to mostly English. In between being a frog or a Vegimal or a dinosaur...