Foreign Perspectives

Naturally, they’re all in French so when I was over in the UK recently, I bought a heap of books for him to balance the French with the English and we’ve been reading to him from each of them pretty much every night for the last month or so. All those little books seem very light but buying 20+ of them does make for a seriously heavy case. Still, I have enough to keep him going for the next 2 or 3 months.

The strange thing is that although I’ve degree level French and the books are for up to 5 year olds, I don’t understand all of the words. I guess that’s a side-effect of me learning French mainly as an adult and kids use a slightly different vocabulary. Certainly I noticed that a few years ago when I was able to chat to Wendy’s French cousins but found it really hard to understand the kids (of around 9 or 10). It is odd though when you can understand quite complex vocabulary and grammar yet can’t understand what should be much simpler language spoken by children.

One other thing that we notice each Thursday is that James seems to understand French quite well now when the librarian speaks to him. He doesn’t say a whole lot in French (just a few isolated words) but I’m sure that’ll come in another month or two.

PS… if any of you have books suitable for 2 to 5 year olds that you don’t need anymore, I’d be more than willing to take them off your hands. Don’t worry, you don’t need to post them to France as I can either get my parents to collect them or pick them up myself next time I’m over.