Moi je dis... Or teaching other children

5 Aug 2012

We are currently in Brazil for a mixture of business and pleasure. This is the first time our daughter is spending so much time in a Portuguese-speaking country. We are hoping this is going to boost her Portuguese a little as it is clearly her weakest language.

LJ is sitting in a bookstore in São Paulo reading a book. A little boy comes over, looks at her book and says to her:

Tartaruga*
pointing at the turtle in the book.

Leila turns to him and says:
moi je dis tortue**


She then went on to play with him and tell him the names of the animals in French while fully aware he was speaking "like Papa"! The boy was suitably impressed.

* turtle in Portuguese
** i say turtle (in French)



2 comments

  1. There's nothing like a stay in a country where the minority language is the community language to boost it! Especially if you can combine it with a little peer pressure like here, where she gets to meet Portuguese-speaking children. Hope your visit carries on so well :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a lovely story! I just recently found your blog - it's great to have the chance to follow your posts as we are a very new multilingual family (baby is nearly 7 months) and just figuring things out.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your feedback.