Sunday, November 4, 2007

First translation mistake.

Laetitia is being raised bilingual for the time being (we will introduce Mandarin at a later stage) and unlike the norm for most children raised in such a setup, she started speaking at a rather early stage. She currently could speaks in complete sentences in both English and French although most of the time it is still short phrases. She also knows many words in both English and French and uses them frequently. Yesterday, she made her first little translation error. I have used the word "upside down" a lot with her. It usually happens when she takes a book to read, she used to hold it upside down and she still does it now but would gleefully look at me and say "upside down". In the same token, Etienne says "à l'inverse" to indicate that something is in the opposite direction, could be upside down, reversed etc. And it happened when her papa told her the table was "à l'inverse" and that she had to turn it and she looked at him and said "upside down" as in her mind, these two words was always used in the same context by Etienne and I. He had to try to explain to her that it was not the same in English and French.

Well, I am sure there will be more of such little "language" issues coming up as her vocabulary and speech ability increases.

No comments: