Tuesday, 11 January 2011

Incy Wincy

The girls discovered the proper Arabic word for spider in a board book I offered them at Christmas. They love this book, both of them now (try to) sing the arabic alphabet. They now know the arabic words for frog, chick, rabbit, spider and cockerel.

The thing is, apart from the most familiar animals such as dog, cat, cow and sheep, I mostly use the French words for animals. So until now a chick has always been poussin and a spider has always been araignée. Now a chick is also "sous" and a spider is "ankaboot". I am chuffed that they embraced so readily these new words.

Now I should give myself a kick in the backside and start teaching BK1 some basics for reading and writing Arabic.

Oh, and the girl's favourite nursery rhyme at the moment is:
Incy Wincy Ankaboot climbed up the water spout ... BabelDad and I find their rendition absolutely hilarious!
Posted by BabelMum at 21:28
Labels: , , , , ,

8 comments:

  1. Sarah @ Baby Bilingual29 January 2011 at 22:47

    How cute that they're doing code-switching in nursery rhymes! I love the way that kids play with language. (It sounds like "Incy Wincy Ankaboot" is deliberate.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. BabelMum31 January 2011 at 11:13

    It is indeed deliberate, it makes them and us laugh. Children seem to start playing with language at an early stage, and same goes for multilinguals :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maria Babin2 February 2011 at 12:27

    love it! children are so inventive when it comes to code-switching, so fun! 4 languages at home! impressive!

    ReplyDelete
  4. BabelMum2 February 2011 at 14:44

    Thanks for your comment Maria. I have just had a browse of your blog, great stuff! I would be interested to know how easy/tricky you find transmitting 2 native languages to your children (spanish and english in your case, arabic and french in mine).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Marjorie2 February 2011 at 21:20

    Such a funny story! And congratulations on the arrival of BK3, whose gorgeous photograph is alongside the comment box as I write. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. BabelMum2 February 2011 at 21:46

    Thank you Marjorie, she is currently in a similar position, zonked out on the boob :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous3 February 2011 at 21:08

    I am surprised at how early language humor develops. My almost two year old makes "jokes" by switching words and we all find it hilarious, especially him! But it goes to show just how integrated their understand of both languages is.

    ReplyDelete
  8. BabelMum4 February 2011 at 19:28

    Yes, language humour seems to start quite early indeed. I have just taken a look at your blog, some lovely pics there. Must be quite interesting for you to live in Spain, coming from Canada!

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)