How many of you wish that you had been exposed to a foreign language as a young child/toddler rather than learn Spanish, French, sign language for the first time when you were in middle school, high school, or even as late as college?
Many of you either have young children or precious little grand children. Even if you are not fluent in a foreign language it doens't hurt to teach them a little of what you know.
I would like to share with you a few common French words/phrases that I use on a daily basis when talking to our 14 month old daughter.
*Note that the pronunciation guides that I give are not based on the International Phonetic Alphabet!
la chambre de bébé
To tell your baby to "go night-night"
say
Fais dodo= "go night-night"
Prounounced - [fay doh-doh]
Milk, a word babies love to hear
However, this word is difficult for a baby/toddler to pronounce- a baby must be able to use m, l, k, sounds to say the word MILK.
The French word for milk is le lait, which is simpler than it's English equivalent-milk, but the French have an even easier baby word for le lait:
lolo = milk in French "baby talk"
Pronounced = [loh-loh]
Amelia with her favorite rattle at 8 months
Every morning after we are finished with breakfast, I pick Amelia up and say "Jouons!"
Jouons! = Let's Play!
Pronounced [zjoo-ohn] - The S is silent
Here is another word that I have really been trying to emphasize lately. Around 13 months Amelia began to say "No." or "No!" quite well. After reading about this new phase, I learned that not only is this word familiar to them (after hearing Mommy say, "No! Don't touch the DVD player!" "No! Don't spit out your food!" countless times a day), the word "No" is also much easier to pronounce.
Well, I've found that Amelia is quite adept at using a W sound, so we've been working on:
Oui!= Yes!
Perhaps, oui will take the place of no!
Image Resources: #1 Jacadi #2. Jacadi #3. Flickr- solarider #4. A la parisienne