Hebrew-15 , French-1, English-0

Noa probably says more than 15 words in Hebrew by now, and this number is growing every day.

Her first word in a language other than Hebrew is ‘tout-doux’ in French.

It’s the expression you use when you show a kid how to pet another kid gently, the equivalent of  ’make nice’ in English or ‘tova’ in Hebrew.

Thank you daycare for this first French word (and many to come)!

Oh and nothing in English so far…

Fuzzy words

So we have words. Definite, intentional, cute little words.

About 7-10 of them (or maybe more?).

When we understand them, it’s great, but sometimes they’re a little fuzzy.

First there’s recognizing that something she says is even a word at all. One day at dinner time, Noa was reaching towards the table saying “ma ma” over and over again. Of course we knew she wanted something but we didn’t realize that what she’s saying is not random gibberish. Suddenly it hit us, she’s saying ‘mayim’ (Hebrew for ‘water’). What a revelation, no need to play the what-the -heck-do-you-want game. The same happened recently with ‘pu’ for ‘tapua’ch’ (Hebrew for apple).

Maybe first words???

I’m not the one to rush to declare Noa’s first words. I would get way too excited.

But it seems that maybe possibly her first spoken words are emerging (no way!!).

There have been several occurrences of ‘aba’ (Hebrew for father/daddy) in the right context, some ‘ma’ in the right context (‘ima’ is Hebrew for mother/mommy). We have friends whose adorable 14 months old daughter says ‘aba’ for both mom and dad even though she knows the difference, ‘aba’ is such a beautifully designed word for toddlers to pronounce.

Excuse me, do you bark English?

The other day my husband was reading a book in Hebrew to our daughter. When they got to a picture of a dog he said “kelev” (=dog in Hebrew) “woof woof”. I had to intervene. Hebrew speaking dogs bark “hau hau” or “hav hav” but certainly not “woof woof”. It’s true. Spanish speaking dogs go “guau guau”, and of course Japanese and Chinese ones – “wang wang” (what, you can’t hear it?). Hungarian dogs go “vhau vhau” and Hindi – “bhow bhow”.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrr

Quite a few people have been asking me why I haven’t written new posts in a while. Well, she hasn’t been giving me material the little monkey. At least nothing that has to do with multilingualism. At 9 months old, she is up to a lot, crawling all over the place, obsessively trying to pull herself up to stand on anything available, she also thinks she can walk but when she tries it turns into practicing how to fall right.

She is also talking up a storm (which isn’t a new thing for her). No words in the traditional sense, but lots of Gibberish. Until recently there was nothing in it that made it sound particularly Hebrew or particularly English. All the vowels and consonants she was producing were ones that are found in both languages (a,e,i,k,t,b,d,m,p….). They actually do differ a bit (that is, an English b and a Hebrew b are not identical), but it’s hard to distinguish them, especially when you hear them in a Gibberish and not a recognizable word.

Finally this week I heard her make the first sound that seems to be distinctively Hebrew – ‘R’. Not how you would pronounce it in English obviously, kind of closer to the French ‘R’, but not quite. Who came up with the idea to WRITE a blog about spoken language anyways? It should be recorded!

Noa and friends

When I was growing up and developing language, everyone around me spoke the same language. Despite the fact that most of our parents and definitely our grandparents spoke other languages, my friends and I learned Hebrew and almost nothing else. Only at around 9 years old we started learning Arabic and English in school.

Unlike me, my lucky daughter and her little friends are all getting a head start on more than one language and they are not even a year old.

Hello, Shalom, Bye-bye

My daughter is getting more and more expressive and one of the most powerful ways for her to interact relies on hand gestures. I’m not making any special effort to teach her baby sign language but it is quite common to naturally introduce some known gestures as a baby seems ready to do it.

We have clapping down (but the word for it she seems to know only in one language), waving bye-bye seems to be the next one. What’s going to follow? Blowing a kiss? Maybe pointing?

So she knows at least one word in one language, now what?

Not too long ago I realized my daughter knows a word. At 7.5 months old I was sure there’s at least one word she understands (other than her own name). Let the fun begin! Watching kids develop their communication skills and acquire the complex system of a language is so fascinating. Finally I get to witness it first hand with my own daughter. How exciting!