bilingual 3.8 yo doesnt conjugate the past properly - do they do this even if they aren't biingual..???

[Malaleche]

DD1 3.8 yo who I think is on a par with native English speakers of her age, has started saying things like 'I doed it' instead of 'I did it'. Is this normal? I don't know because we live in Spain and I don't hear other English-speaking kids.

Also, a question for parents of bilingual kids - when your child starts to favour the majority language even tho their minority language skills/level is better - how do you feel? What can i do to keep the minority language in the forefront? or should i just continue to do what i always did? Speak it, read in it, play story tapes etc.
The thing is i feel really annoyed when she speaks to me in the majority language, i feel she's rejecting me even tho i know that's not true, just need some pep-talking really from others who've been there...

Belgium! Not exactly exciting but v.good quality of life once you have children ... . Spectacularly good food too (she says looking down at rapidly expanding waistline ) Missing friends and family is the worst bit (and conversely always having to spend holidays in the UK visiting friends and family!!) if that makes sense!!

At least you have the advantage of sunshine? Are you in N. or S. Spain Malaleche?

Yes, as everyone else has already said, this is totally normal.
Children learn to speak by copying what they hear and then finding and applying the rules.
In the beginning they remember the irregularities by copying.
Once they start to learn the rules they regularise everything. They then later learn the irregular words and stop making the mistakes.
It's perfectly normal for a child to say MICE, then go through a phase of saying MOUSES before learning the exception to the S rule and returning to using MICE.

I also live in a bilingual house.
My DD is only 6 months old so all this ahead of us, but we're hoping that she'll be bilingual in Enlish and Japanese.
What joys lie ahead!

counting - (whoops missed out the 'o' there!)
am in the south, Granada. I like Belguim, well what ive seen of it which isnt much. have good friends in Brussels, nice little bars. Ah, and Moules Frittes of course! agree about missing friends and family and always having to go to the UK on holiday! why didnt we just stay at home, eh?

Ruth - that will be a real challenge!

Malaleche- Yeah, I know.
We live in Japan.
I speak only English to DD unless we're with Japanese family or friends.
DH is Japanese. He speaks mainly Japanese to her, but mainly English to me.
It's all a bit of a mixed bag really.
As long as we live here we're fairly sure she'll be bilingual.
However, if we move to the UK we're worried that she'd lose the Japanese quite quickly unless we all work hard to use it at home as much as poss.
In fact I need to do that for myself anyway because if we left Japan I'd probaby lose my own Japanese pretty quickly too.

My DD (5)speaks German at the moment, almost no English. I do remind her to speak English (especially in front of her brother) but she hears German in kindergarten and at home as I speak to DH in German too.

Carry on as you are, with Cds, reading etc. It is also important to give her a good reason for speaking English. I tell my DD that she needs to speak English otherwise her Granny wont understand, and since she loves her Granny to bits, that is a good motivater.

Do you have anyone in your area who speaks English? Perhaps a English speaking family or a English speaking mother-child group. I also find it helpful that English is quite a high prestige language, other children are impressed that she can speak a different language, adults think it is great. If you can show her that it is a fabulous thing, speaking two languages then she might be more interested.

I understand you feeling rejected, it is very common. But don't get disheartened, keep speaking to her, she will thank you later for it.

My DC speak German with a slight regional accent and English with a slight Scottish accent. And she does the literal translating thing too. Can be quite funny. She always gets inviting wrong. "I am going to lad Sophie to my birthday party ein "

Hi Malaleche

I doed it, I threwed it, I ated it (as in ate rather than hated) are all perfectly normal.

One bright spark told me not to correct because the DCs would learn it naturally. I have no idea if this is true or not.

No experience of bringing up bilingual children but I waa brought up bilingual myself. Is there more you could do in the minority language? Films etc? All my reading books were in English at home, so that helped.

macmama, mine don't slip in german words like that, but they so use the slightly wrong english word becasue it mirrors the German iyswim, so they always say 'sack' instead of bag, or 'land' instead of country, what land is he from? And they say 'extra' instaed of on purpose. I didn't do it extra mummy!

Granada Malaleche (green with envy emoticon)!!!

It's really interesting reading about the mistakes your children make due to mixing up their two languages.
I wonder whether my DD will do the same or if English and Japanese are too different to confuse in that way. Unlike English and German or English and French, the two languages bear no grammatical or vocabularial similarities.
I guess I'll find out in a couple of years!!

macmamma, my son does that too!
Mummy, can you leih me 1 euro aus?

dd2 asked for Sosso-latte the other day. She usually speaks english to me - it took me a few minutes to work that one out!

nighty, sorry being a bit dim today, what did your dd mean with Sosso-Latte?

Ernest, my DD says extra instead of deliberately as well. The good thing is, I speak German so I know where she is getting it from. Find it interesting that she is able to directly translate.

Find it difficult sometimes because I don't know if they are speaking English or German and when they pronounce something wrong it can be almost impossible to understand them.

DD came home from Kita recently and told me that they had been playing with the "Ferkeleine" (or that is what I understood) I kept asking her what she meant, what about the piglets and she got really angry because I just didn't get it. The teacher helped the next day. They had been playing with a Pferdeleine. DD was still having problems with pf at that time!

schokolade
my children translate directly too, which I find fairly cute, but keep correcting.

I find the direct translations hilarious. dd came up with "heared off" for stopped (aufhören) and she calls an ambulance an ill-van (Krankenwagen)!

Ill-van, that's gorgeous!
This thread has made me think twice about how dd2 (3 1/2 yrs) is speaking. I realise that she speaks a mixture of english and german
eg Can I spiele mit? in many sentences. She has only just started to speak, so I dont want to correct her all the time. I guess she will grow out of it.