Funny things that bilingual children say...

[kindersurprise]

that you cannot tell anyone else as they do not "get" it.

Strictly speaking, this is not a bilingual thing but none of my family would understand it, and I need to share it!

DS was eating cereal yesterday and when he had finished he tipped the bowl up and drank up the milk. I was telling DH that it was his fault that DS has terrible table manners and said, "das ist Dein Einfluss".

DS howled, "ich bin kein Fluss!"

What funny things have your children said?

We are a British family living in Austria and one of DS's first words was Baggar. However at the time DH & I didn't know this was German for digger and both assumed he was saying B*gger.

I'm not a river! LOL bless him.

What my children do all the time is they take an english verb, and add the dutch ending to it (german readers must recognise this as well, I guess), so 'cut' becomes 'cutten' instead of the dutch word 'knippen' or 'snijden'.

we are an italian family living in England and the dc make all sorts of mistakes. Like hugeheadofhair's dc they add an italian end to an english verb and "italianize" english words and viceversa. I do the same

mine use German english-sounding words, eg what Land is that, instead of country, or they'll say, what for a book is that. We had Bagger too

My DD1, almost 7, always says "grab" to mean to record something, like a movie from tv, as in my lenguage catalan, the verb for to record is "grabar". So, if we have friends, and she asks me to "grab" a tv program, they look at her like is she was mad, and she me has to explain what she really means.
My DD2, almost 3, sometimes, in a sentence mixes both languages enlish/catalan, one work of each. I can make sense, but I wonder about the CM and in the nursery.

The best/worst thing is when they speak absolute gobbledegook (in which my ds1 is very fluent) and non-Chinese speakers think they are speaking Chinese and non-English speakers think they are speaking English ... Of course it might be genuine Polish/Arabic/any-other-language for all I know ...

Scottish living in France.

My DD does the mix and matching verb thing too. At the moment she says 'grimping' when her sister crawls, also 'mangeing' for eating.

She also takes linguistic shortcuts. For example the question form in French has fewer variations than in English so DD will say things like 'Est-ce-que we are going to the park?' instead of having to figure out if she needs to use are/is/will/have/do/did etc.

Am constantly amazed by children's ability to aquire language.

My dd1 once said "Wir sind aus Milch rausgerannt" (literally translated from We have run out of milk)

I really dont know what it means (I'm usually laughing too much an d trying to hide it from dcs so they dont think its rude) but in Gaelic (which the kids spek but I dont) there is a word "fiacann" which sounds just ike "F**king" which kills me.
THere's also a Gaelic kids tv programme called "Cunntas".

?*!? What AM I exposing them to?

em lol

ds1 is another English words/German syntax user - if something is not to his taste he might well howl 'I want it not!'

I found it very difficult not to laugh this evening when DS (4) sat me down on the sofa to 'teach' me how to say words in the language he uses in school. Not one of them were real words, just invented words using the new sounds he is hearing and using. On the one hand it was fascinating because he was combining all the sounds that he doesn't use in his 2 home languages, to make new words. On the other hand it was hilarious, in a proud mummy kind of way, to hear his invented words... and to be told off for not repeating them exactly right!

I too am Scottish, living in France. DS (2.9) does the mix and match thing, too.
Last week, he came out with "look Mummy, il y a a grand garçon qui sait crosser the road tout seul."
That second 'a' is not superfluous, it's an English indirect object, bang in the middle of all that French.

AuldAlliance, that is fantastic! I love that sentence.

Aww... sweet! as a french mum in England, I experience it all the time as DD (4) and DS (2) keep inventing new words. My favourites are:

• the fusee (rocket) is blast offing!"
• regarde at the poissonzzz (english S at the end!)

We had French and English families around at Xmas and played a game of Chinese whispers around the table. It was hilarious because it would always get muddled up in French or in English!

We live in Poland. Here the same verb is usedfor raining and snowing, except that with snow you add the noun for snow on the end.
So for the last few weeks DD1 has been constantly saying "Look Mummy, it's raining snow."

Butwhat really got me this Christmas was this:
DD1 goes to a Catholic preschool run by nuns. Of course, round Xmas time there is loads of talk of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus. I am not religious at all so tend to go in for the term "Mother Mary" rather than BVM.
My girls are currently at the stage where a big one and a little one of anything is rechristened mummy and baby.
["Get to the point, pleeease." "I am, I am"]
Well, on Xmas Day, it so happened that DD2 did a poo on the potty. She stood up proudly and announced to big sis that it wasa mummy poo and a baby poo. On examination DD1 pronounced "Oh yes, Mother Mary and Baby Jesus"...

My sister lives in south africa with her 3 year old ds. She only speaks Afrikaans to him but the lady that looks after him during the day can only speak English, or Zulu (her native language).

He seemed to just grasp what she was saying from the beginning, but my sis says, when he gets really excited and speaks fast, he mixes all 3 languages and she doesn't understand a word (apart from the odd Afrikaans one)!

Makes her laugh though!

My ds says 'bump die head' instead of bump the head. 'Die' is an Afrikaans word.

Not only do children do this!!!!

My dp when he first came over here didnt know the word for socks so he just stuck an o in the middle to make it spanish and he asked for sockos!!!!

This is great. My mum used to keep a book for all our strange language use (she is French, my dad is English).

A fave food of my sister and I was 'jumping potatoes' My sister also used to refer to her pyjama fesse.

I love the things bilingual children come out with though, it is amazing in the same way that Spanglish (for example) is. That utter grammatical coherence between two languages. They know they are mixing them, but to them it is natural and their brains simply won't let them string together anything ungrammatical.

Hi everyone, I'm new here. English living in Holland married to a Dutchman - no children yet but if we did have them I'd def want to bring them up bilingual. Did langs at uni too so am fascinated generally by all these threads! Incidentally hubby and I speak Dunglish at home, English and Dutch door elkaar (mixed up) often changing language halfway through a sentence (and back again) as your children do! I wonder though: do all your children who also do this, always have the same "main" language which dominates the grammatical structure of their sentences (e.g. always German structure but sometimes English vocab thrown in) or is that also mix and match according to their mood?

Am loving all these examples, please ignore my boring question if it's not in the spirit of the thread!

Hi Jane,

Welcome to MN.

In answer to your question, I think that it depends on the family. Our DCs speak more German than English as they are in kindergarten here in Germany, so they are more exposed to the German language. (I am British and DH is German).

My DD never puts a English word into a German sentence. When speaking English (which she is not keen on at the moment) she asks if she does not know the translation. She is 5.9yo. She sometimes uses German grammar, eg. puts the verb at end of sentence when speaking English.

DS is only 3.5 and has a real German-English pick and mix going on. More German, but the occasional English word. He is just starting to sort out the languages, and the grammar.

I find it quite difficult to bring up children bilingualy, much more challenging than I expected. Everyone says how easy it is for children to learn 2 languages. Don't be fooled, it is bloody hard work sometimes, being the only one speaking English. Both children speak German to me all the time. They both understand English and DD can speak reasonably fluently, but only if forced to. I really hope that it will be worth it in the end.

We are going to start going to a Anglican Church with Sunday School so that they get the chance to speak to other British children.

DS is still wee, but he basically speaks much more French than English, since we're in France and the childminder is French, so English is very much the minority language.
However, he does transpose English structures into French, so he'll say "je cherche pour", or "j'attends pour", even though the preposition is incorrect in French, because it's "look for" and "wait for" in English.
Over the holidays, we were staying with friends and he wanted a pillow in his bed, so I told him to ask our hostess. I asked him, "do you remember how to say pillow in French?", since it's not a word he uses much except with me. "Bien sûr, Mummy", he said in a huffy tone and promptly ran off to ask, "Est-ce que je peux avoir un pillow dans mon lit?" Sometimes he's not really conscious of speaking two different languages.
It is hard bringing up a bilingual child when you are the sole speaker of your language. I have to say Fireman Sam has been a great help in increasing DS's language input. Today he was telling me "I going to save the day" and asking what "great fires of London" means.

Thanks for the welcome!

I think that's a great idea to go to church or equiv place where other people speak your language. LOL about Fireman Sam! A French friend of mine told me once about her brother who is married to an Englishwoman. When they had children they brought them up bilingually but the sons got to the point that they would refuse to speak English because they saw it as a "girly" language (because only mum spoke it). Until they met their older, male, English cousins, that is... And then of course it was really macho to speak English haha

I'm only 7 weeks pg but had to go for a scan (for genetic reasons) yesterday and there was an English woman ahead of me in the queue trying to understand the Dutch receptionist. She got there in the end but I was really in two minds about whether to say "eh up" a) to help and b) to make contact as future other-speaker-of-English which you're all now looking for!!!!!!!!! That's quite sad, I realise now :-) Hopefully I'll bump into her again.

Anyway I have hijacked this thread enough now, sorry (sorry my husband and I don't have enough funny Dunglish things to repeat - although he did use to say "chicken paws" instead of "chicken legs" when we first met - cute!! I'm sure he's got funnier things to say about my Dutch...)

I'm Scottish and my dh is Dutch Jane HH and we have some funny things from the children...but more from dh

like the time he wrote me an email telling me ythat he had come home late the previous evening ( was away on biz) smelling of perfume, bear and havanas. He meant beer, but of course we now have jokes about perfume wearing bears in our house!

the children tend to anlgicize Dutch words and vice cersa.
"papa, papa, Komen mij chasen" (chase me daddy)
"the tractor is geploughing the field mummy"

I like the idea of Dunglish.....will have to tell dh!

Rading the story of the baby Jesus again for the umpteenth time tonight before bed, and got to the bit where Mary and Joseph get to Bethlehem, but there's no room in the inn. There's a picture of a stable with the animals, at which DD2 (2,5y) points to the hens and says: "Mummy, are these the Bethle-hens?"