09 January 2014

Peetut Butter und Honig

Here are my baby twins (as opposed to my older twins) putting in their lunch orders--in German, of course. At the time of this recording they are about 4 and a half years old.

As you see, sometimes we don't use the German word for an item. Somehow, we always use "peanut butter" instead of "Erdnussbutter". I don't really know why. It's just one of those things. We have several words like that: peanut butter, bubbles, sandwich, stinker, etc. We just simply stick the English word into our German sentence: "Schau die vielen Bubbles an" (instead of Blasen). It's something we could (and probably should) correct, but we just don't worry about those few minor vocabulary exceptions. Sometimes, the one language just has a better word to describe what we're taking about. For example, if I say "Marmaladenbrot" I usually picture an open face sandwich. But if I use the word sandwich, then I know that I'm picturing a bread on top and on bottom with stuff in the middle. Plus, sometimes I just like the English word better. For example I like the word bubbles better than the word Blasen...maybe because Blasen makes me think of blisters and I don't like blisters.

2 comments:

  1. Awesome! I wish I knew another language to teach my children. Your kids are so adorable!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Janessa, I'm seeing if I can reply to your comment. Just seeing if this works. I'm new to this blogger business.

    ReplyDelete

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Bilingual Baby Dream Team

Going on 20+ years of raising our bilingual babies...
I'm so grateful for a sweet husband who was willing to give this whole experiment a try and and that he was willing to speak German to our kids, even though his German exposure had been limited to a few semesters of college German. It's been one of the most fun and rewarding things we've done. The fact that our family speaks German has given us our own identity and helps the kids feel like they are a part of something special. And anything that helps your family feel special and connected is a good thing.