Stress relief

[velvetpage]

Elizabeth has a bad head cold, or at least, a very drippy one. As a result, no one in our house is getting a lot of sleep at the moment. (It's amazing how sick child usually means less sleep for the parents, isn't it?)

Her vocabulary is increasing almost daily. Over the weekend, she added "chaussure" (shoe), "trou" (hole - specifically, the unmended bit in her sleeper)and "nounours" (teddy bear). All in French, which was nice. I'm pretty sure she also knows "shoe", but doesn't use it around me, which shows a high degree of intelligence in my admittedly biased opinion.

Whenever I'm tempted to use words that could get me fired if my students told their parents about them, to describe said students, I think about her, and remember that having a job is more important the the actual work I'm doing.

When Pyat gets home, some time in the next twenty minutes, I'm going to work out and get rid of the rest of my job stress that way.

Comments

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Poor Elizabeth, I hope she clears up soon; for her sake and yours!



For a split second I thought you were going to say you'd teach her the words instead *giggles*

How many words has she mastered? Sounds like it'll be hard to keep up with, shortly! Does she use words in both languages for the same thing? I knew a family with a little boy where the mother was french and the father was english, but I didn't see enough to know where his word preferences lay. He'd use french phrases with mom and english with dad, but would ignore both if it suited him :D

There's a little boy with autism at the center where I work. He's recieving treatment entirely in french, but when he sees his favourite treat, the boy who doesn't have many words in either language will shout "cookie!" :)

Sorry for the ramble, but bilingual language acquisition fascinates me! I blame my linguistics courses!

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I very quietly admit to myself that my fascination with the process of language acquisition is at least part of the reason I'm teaching her French.

Let me see - drink, cookie, babar (describing the elephant on a coaster I have in the living room) bye, hi, chaussure, something that I think means chaussette (sock), no, oui, up, down, banana (only she says "nana") yes, Belle (all dogs are named Belle, after Oma's dog) Mow (all cats), bey (bird), woof, ball. . . Pyat, can you think of any more? So eighteen and counting. Plus, of course, several that aren't yet clear enough that I've realized they mean something. All of these, of course, are said in her own unique brand of baby talk - no r's, no l's, lots of repetition. She also makes a few hand signs - "fini" is brushing her hands off, and of course up and down.

I'll keep you posted on the language acquisition thing.

When and where did you study linguistics?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Dah-ee and Momma, of course!

Wumpa, from the TV show.

She's said what sounded like "please" once or twice. "Dah-eee gink peese."

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Aww, she's got quite a few words already!
Pyat was telling us the story of him whacking at the "bey" house fly, her new friend :D
I studied linguistics formally at McMaster, taking some courses for a couple years. When I ended up with Psychology as a major, I found a course in last year called The Psychology of Linguistics, which was either a psych or a linguistics class, depending on your major! Before that, I studied it haphazardly through highschool, while taking French, German and Latin (and attempting to take Japanese, but Mrs Tokiwa retired the year I was to take it!). I was originally to be a lLinguistics and Modern Languages major, but I went the English and Psych route instead (which were offering really excellent courses).

Oh! Does she do any baby sign, aside from the fini gesture? It reminded me of all the books I've seen for pre verbal expression, but I bet working on bilingualism is more than enough challenge!

Ooh, that was a long ramble for an answer. Oops! :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I took French, language, linguistics, and translation stream at Mac from '95 to '99, which let me in for 12 units total of English-language linguistics, and another 12 of the same content in French. I think I learned it better in French than in English, though; the classes were smaller. The phonetics class in French taught me everything I ever wanted to know about pronunciation and intonation; I have a great accent for an anglophone. I briefly considered the LInguistics and ML major as well, but decided I'd get more use out of a degree with more French. I still consider going back, at some point in the future, and doing formal speech therapy though.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

That'd be a really interesting field to work in! We have SLP consultations at work, and one of my coworkers is actually leaving us in the fall to pursue speech language path. schooling, and another coworker had already gone. Everyone says it's a very difficult program to get into! I bet you wouldn't have much problem, though, with your background.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I got into the toughest teacher's college in the province without much trouble. I think because I always knew exactly what I wanted to do, I was focused enough in university that my marks didn't drop at all from high school. Kind of sad that I knew then, but don't know now, isn't it?

Anyway, I would need a few more base courses, though, since my basic degree is not linguistics, and I think I'd need more of a third language - having dropped Spanish in second year, I'm not sure what I'd pick up.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

How about Mandarin, or Urdu? (I realize that it's not as easy to learn them as it is to learn romance languages -- esp. when one's already got French under one's belt -- but certainly there's a whole lot of opportunities available to those who can speak/teach these languages, too...)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'd like to try something totally different. I might go for Arabic, on the grounds that it's a language of trade and religion and is therefore the lingua franca of the middle east. It also has provided a great number of words and ideas to English, and would be interesting to study as a source language.

On the other hand, I'm trying desperately to come up with the money to take the last two courses I need to put myself in the highest pay category. They're bird courses, but at a grand each, I can't find the cash.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, and signing - I started out doing other signs with her, notably "mange" and "bois", but neither seems to have caught on. I didn't do many of them. However, according to my mother-in-law who looks after her, she makes the "fini" sign when Oma says "all done!" She really is generalizing! She's also learning new words much faster now. She spent the afternoon at my mom's house, with my sister who has a pet hamster named Zeus. Aunty asked, "Where's Zeusy? Go find Zeusy!" around four o'clock, and Elizabeth took off at a run yelling, "Zizzy, Zizzy!" and stopped under the dresser on which is situated Zeus' cage. And she calls Aunty's boyfriend by his first name, quite clearly, though the r is still an issue.