Multiculturalism and Music

Il n'y a pas de hasard, il n'y a que des rendez-vous - Paul Eluard.

Also the first verse in Ouverture by Etienne Daho.

Babeldad is somewhere on a Swiss mountain doing what he loved doing best when we first met some sixteen years ago: looking at the night sky and photographing stars.

I, naturally, instead of going to bed early and catching up on some well-needed sleep, sit at the computer, typing furiously on the keyboard. And I listen to music.

Why Etienne Daho? Maybe because he used to live in Manchester and London. Maybe because he reminds me of some of the music I used to listen to when Babeldad and I first met. Or maybe because he was born and spent a large chunk of his childhood in Algeria, before being uprooted to France...

Music is powerful. It can bring up and trigger unexpected emotions. I do sometimes burst into tears when hearing or singing a song.

What is interesting is that being multicultural, I find myself responding to wildly different genres and languages. Below is a selection of memorable songs and artists to me, in different languages.

Dahmane El Harrachi	Yarrayeh (Arabic)
Abdelkader Chaou	Chehilet Laayani (Arabic)
Raina Rai	Mimouna (Arabic)
Nouara	Ammi azizen (Kabyle)
Enrico Macias	J'ai quitté mon pays and many others
Daft Punk	Something about us
Adriano Celentano	Don't play that song (that Italian accent!)
Carlos Santana	Moonflower

And too many songs by the Beatles and the Bee Gees to list!

Do you listen to music in different languages?

What's in a Word or Four!

Our 26-month-old fourth daughter is in a unique linguistic and cultural set-up.

She was born in German-speaking Switzerland, lives in a mostly English-speaking neighbourhood and is spoken to in Arabic and French by her mother, German by her father, English by her three sisters, and Swiss/German/English by the environment.

Despite (or thanks to!) all these linguistic inputs, it is fair to say that her speech has recently exploded!

Just for fun, we started listing all the words and sentences she can say.
She can name 27 people, three dogs and one cat.
She can request songs by saying: "Timber", "Aicha", "Chebba", "Let it go".
She can say simple words such as pipi, caca, dodo, oui, bébé, no, yes, quoi, oui etc.
And she can say the following non-exhaustive list of common words and phrases.

Arabic	French	German	English
باب (door)	Nutella	heiss	thank you
خبز (bread)	fromage	Brot	what the heck
تشينة (orange)	banane	ab	go away
كلب (dog)	stylo	guck	again
قط (cat)	pardon	Auto	cat
برا (outside)	balançoire	Mund	come on
ضوء (light)	encore	Auge	sleep
صباط (shoe)	bus	Kopf	tractor
قعدي (sit)	camion	Kinn	mango
وعلاه (why)	manteau	Backe	seesaw
	bêtise	Hals	iPad
	gaufre	Nase	ball
	crème	Hand	thank you
	glace	Finger	please
	compote	Jacke	gone
	debout	Lampe	move
	poubelle	Boden	TV
	poupée	Hund	hug
		Schuh	what did you do
		Kuh
		Zebra
		Elefant
		Tigger
		Giraffe
		Affe
		Raus

The influence of the environment via German and English is staggering already. I think I am doing well though, given I am the only source of Arabic and French.

Trilingual Toddler

Here are two conversations my 22-month old toddler and I had recently.

Me: "Nrouhou letounoubil?" (shall we go to the car?)
Baby: "Oui! Auto!" (Yes! Car!)

Tot: "Berra!" (outside!)
Me: "Nrouhou berra?" (shall we go outside?)
Tot: "Oui, berra. Come. Sebbati" (Yes, outside. Come. My shoes)

There's so much going on in these few sentences.

First, my Algerian dialect clearly shows French and Spanish influences: the word for car stems from automobile;  the word for shoes comes from zapato.

Then my daughter says the Arabic berra, the german Auto, the English come and the French oui. Mind you, not really sure whether she's saying come or komm in German.

In any case, BK4 is officially at least trilingual!

Ski Camp

BK1, who will be 11 in March, is currently taking part in a ski camp. Two firsts: going to a holiday camp and skiing.

She's a mere two-hour drive, but she could be at the other side of the world, she's been gone for 5 days today. I can't wait to see her tomorrow and hear all about it!

Meanwhile she sent me the following messages via her friend's phone.

Bonjour hadawin nadna. le snow ouw vraiment vraiment high. Est-ce que ça va el tmec. Eneya ou Anna ana nrcdo kdem each other ou berech kenna ne cuddleo ma each other. Comment sont les autres? Caien une notre Fille ou ai vraiment vraiment funny. Je pense peut-être gdro ne bio friends ou Anna aussi. Koli hello end les autres ou blic eni OK. Miss you. Le Internet hana ouw Rubbish. Bye Bye

Geh ouw bien. Rachna fok la piste rouge le whole morning. Ou berk tacht 5 fois. Krib rocht fok la Piste noire

 Next time anyone asks me what do the girls speak, I'll show them this!

BK3 Lost Her German

The Babelkids spent 7 weeks in Algeria with the Babelwife and her parents this Summer.

Towards the end of their stay, we noticed that the kids became less interested in speaking with me via skype. As an example: three days before their return, BK3 came into the room while we were skyping, only to look at the screen and almost run off.

Now they are back and we know why: she completely lost her German!

BK3 is now trying to speak with me mostly in French, but with a lot of Arabic mixed into the sentences, which means I have a very hard time understanding what she wants.

7 weeks!

It only took 7 weeks for her to pretty much revolutionize her communications. Pretty good going, I'd say.

Am I worried now? Nope. It'll come back.

I am more worried because we're in the so-called "German-speaking part" of Switzerland. My German is tuned to Northern Germany, and I can tell you that I can not understand a single word when people speak down here, unless they make an effort. I am not worried about that, of course, but I am worried because my daughters will very quickly pick up the accent and I won't understand them anymore ;-)

Family Language Diagram Update

I feel a bit bad: we haven't updated the family language diagram for ages! I cannot even remember how long ago I touched it. Bad Babeldad!

Then again, the situation has only changed very slightly when it comes to languages. All three Babelkids are now sufficiently fluent to be able to speak pretty normally with native speakers of their four languages. English is the dominating language, by a mile, but it has always been.

So all good in the Babelhouse from a language perspective.

Small Changes

Drill down into details though, and you will notice changes.

BK2 is more and more defaulting to English, when in the past she would speak Arabic or maybe German. We now witness (and sometimes interrupt) long conversations between BK2 and BK1 entirely in English. BK2 starts it, usually.

BK3 has recently jumped onto the bandwaggon as well. And while the long days in school are a good justification for why BK2 does it, BK3 doesn't even go to pre-school yet, so she got it entirely from her sisters!

BK1 is probably the one with the most solid knowledge and command of all four languages, as she's always been. I guess the time we were able to devote to her when she was alone really paid off for her.

Slightly Bigger Change

So all is more or less as usual in our Babelfamily.

Just the right time to overthrow it all and add more complexity to the mix: we're moving to Basel, Switzerland!

This is a work-related move, of course, but we did actually chose Basel on purpose based on its proximity to France and Germany and the hope that we would come into a multilingual environment. I won't make any guesses as to what the move will do to the girls' language, but I'm sure it'll be interesting.

If you were thinking "Basel... hm... German-speaking part of Switzerland, isn't it?" then all I can say is "technically yes", which obviously means "nope!". There's a fine line between a dialect and a language, I guess. For me, personally, Swiss German is a language. I recently spent four days in Basel and quickly found that I was better off speaking English if I wanted to actually understand what people said to me. So, depending on how you see it, the girls will either pick up yet another language (and a new majority language, too!), or learn a dialect that is quite frankly very different from mine.

This blog might just come to life again in September!

A Colourful Language

Over the last three months, I have been noting down some of the colourful phrases our three daughters come up with. Here are a few gems.

This hopefully explains why I find it impossible to say what language my children speak!

You might find the following colour key handy.

Green = Arabic; Red = English; Blue = French; Orange = German

BK1 - 8 years and 10 months

When talking with me, BK1 usually uses Arabic grammar with quite a few English and French words. When conversing with her dad, she uses German with some English words/phrases.

Ich hab' das gerade ungetangled* 

BK2 - 5 years and 11 months

Out of the three, BK2 is undoubtedly the one who uses the most English. She has the superpower of making Arabic or German sentences using only English words! I think she wins the code-switching award hands down!

Es ist all right wir aklen mit das! 
Weil ich bin tired, ich bin almost super flumpy! 
Weil es war nothing, ich habe geninjad* around
Ich war nicht even in die cuisine
Rani un peu warm

BK3 - 3 years and 2 months

As BK3 does not attend nursery yet, she is more exposed to our minority languages than the other two were at a similar age. Still. English is ever-present thanks to her older two sisters speaking it at home while playing. She mixes slightly less English in her conversations with her dad and me. 

Ich will Glaeser cherchen
Die feuilles tahen 
das ist noch vraiment skhoun
maddirich encore
Ich will nicht laaben noch das Musik

* ungetangled and geninjad must be the ultimate rainbow words: English verbs conjugated in German!

Multilingual Maths

I find the second hardest task to accomplish with three young children, after international travel, is the morning school run.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock

In our household, school mornings are the most chaotic and loudest times of the day. Between DD1 lounging in bed (she is a night owl like her dad), DD2 deeply absorbed in a sticker book and DD3 playing with Ariel and claiming it is "not morling!, I despair. So from wake-up time at 7.30 and leaving the breakfast table at 8.30, I become une horloge parlante (a speaking clock), telling the time every two to twenty minutes depending on the situation.

We had a great weekend, doing gymnastics, having a school playdate over, a family cinema trip and bike/skate ride. So this morning we all took a particularly long time to get ready. After much barking encouragement, everyone was finally sat at the breakfast table, enjoying the weekend's remnants of waffles and petits pains au chocolat.

At 8.30, it was finally time to leave the table, put shoes and coats on, and convince BK3 that she needs to have a wee if she is to accompany her sisters to school.

BK1 interjects: "Das war zwanzig Minuten" (That was twenty minutes)

BabelDad: "Was war zwanzig Minuten?" (What was twenty minutes)

BK1: "Von wann Mama hat ten past eight gesagt" (From when mum said it was 8 past 10)

Turns out BK1 was doing maths in three languages. I told the time in French, she calculated mentally in English, and said the answer in German! Just like that!

One Person One Language

BK3 turned 3 last week, on Bonfire Night. Her multilingualism is coming in force, particularly since she started going to preschool two mornings a week, a few weeks ago. She does now often string correct sentences together in Arabic, English, German and French, albeit with loads of code-switching.

This morning at the breakfast table, BK1 is a bit moody, not having had enough sleep last night. BK3, wanting to make things better, offers her some peanut butter toast.

BabelDad: BK1 mag kein Erdnussbutterbrot     
BK3:         BK1 mag Honig?
BabelDad: Vielleicht
BK3:        BK1, t'hebbi laassal?
BK1:        Non
BK3:        Papa, Lilia mag nicht Honig

Perfect illustration of OPOL, One Person One Language!

Children's Words

The girls have had a fabulous time at my parents; their daily activities mostly consisted of swimming in the Mediterranean, watching cartoons in French, and eating biscuits and chocolate.

Their Arabic and French came on tremendously. They have been code-switching to their heart's content, saying some funny and touching things. Here is a little collection.

***

BK2, urging me not to deflate her armbands: "Ma t' un-gonfle-hum-ch!"
This is a whole programme in itself. Ma t' ... ch is the negation form in Arabic; hum is Arabic for them; gonfler is French for inflate; un is the English prefix. How did she come up with this amazing sentence? Go figure!

***

BK1, while preparing for our return to Manchester: "habbit nrouh l Manchester, w habbit neq'oud hna fi zayer" (I want to go to Manchester, and I want to stay here in Algiers)

***

BK2, two days before we left Algiers: "ifeely like home hnaya" (it feels like home here), code-switching between Arabic and English.

***

BK3, two days after our return to Manchester: "J'ai bringue trois tbassa" (I have brought three plates). Another trilingual sentence, this time from 34-month old BK3.

***

Me: "BK3, tu es une petite fille sage"(You are a well-behaved little girl)
BK3, outraged: "Je ne suis pas un petit singe!" (I am not a little monkey!)

Yaourt Maison Dans la Mijoteuse (Home-Made Yoghurt in a Slow Cooker)

Annalisa Barbieri's home-made yoghurt post inspired me to share my own recipe of home-made yoghurt in a slowcooker. Furthermore, Annalisa's requested that I write my recipe in another language than English. Here it is in French.


Je vous entends déjà me demander; pourquoi faire son propre yaourt? Eh bien, non seulement le yaourt maison a meilleur gout et est moins cher que le yaourt du commerce, il est aussi extrêmement facile à faire. C'est d'ailleurs tellement facile qu'on a l'impression de tricher!

Cela fait maintenant plus d'un an que je fais mon propre yaourt. Le yaourt maison requiert trois ingrédients: du lait, du yaourt nature et une mijoteuse (slow cooker). Et peut-être un quatrième ingrédient: la patience!

On peut utiliser un peu de yaourt maison pour relancer une nouvelle culture. Au bout de quelques fois, il est préférable de racheter un petit pot de yaourt du commerce pour refaire du yaourt et ainsi de suite:

Il est essentiel que le lait soit tiède au moment de lancer la culture; trop froid et les bactéries ne se multiplieraient pas; trop chaud et les bactéries mourraient.

Ingrédients

4 pintes (2.272 L) de lait entier ou demi-écrémé
2 1/2 cuillerées à soupe de yaourt nature

Méthode

1. Verser le lait dans la mijoteuse, et cuire à basse température pendant 2 heures et demi.
2. Eteindre la mijoteuse, puis laisser tiédir le lait pendant 3 heures. Au bout de ce temps, la température du lait devrait se situer autour de 43 degrés. Vous devriez pouvoir tremper votre doigt dans le lait pendant 5 secondes sans vous bruler.
3. Délayer le yaourt dans un peu de lait tiède, puis verser dans la mijoteuse avec le reste du lait.
4. Remettre le couvercle, puis envelopper la mijoteuse avec une couverture ou une grosse serviette de plage.
5. Laisser fermenter pendant 8 heures ou toute la nuit. Puis mettre le yaourt prêt au réfrigérateur, prêt à utiliser, ou passer à l'étape suivante pour du yaourt Grec crémeux.
6. Placer un linge propre (ou un vieux t-shirt) dans une passoire, y verser le yaourt et laisser filtrer jusqu'à obtention de la consistance désirée. Réfrigérer. Bon appétit.

Blast from the Past

M, a friend of mine from uni, gave us the great pleasure of visiting us with his wife and two children. They made a brief pause on their road trip from Belgium. We're glad they stopped by.

I loved that the first thing his five year old daughter did when she arrived was to look up at her mother and  utter a long sentence, unintelligible to me. That answered any questions I might have had on the family's linguistic situation. They are clearly multilingual.

M's family is a perfect example of OPOL. The children speak Czech with their mother, French with their father, and mainly Dutch outside of the home.

It was such a lovely encounter. Not only did I get to catch up with an old friend, and introduce our respective families, we also witnessed all our children conversing and playing happily in French.

One of the lingusitic highlights of that afternoon was BK2 pleading with M, as they were preparing to leave: "teqqedrou tzidou teqaadou h'naya?" (Can you stay here a little longer?). M, who is half-Algerian, had not spoken Arabic up till then. However, BK2 knew that M spoke Arabic. Based on this piece of info, she consciously or subconsciouly decided to speak to him in what she considered their most common language. 

The  shortest distance between two points is a straight line, unless we are talking about languages and culture...

And of course, M replied to BK2 in Arabic!

French Conversation

It's summer! Proper summer!

The girls are playing outside. BK2 comes in running.

BK2: "Maman, on peut avoir de la glace au chocolat?" (Mum, can we have chocolate ice cream?)

Me: "En dessert, oui" (For pudding, yes)

BK2: "Ooh, je voulais dire maintenant..." (ooh, I meant right now...)

This is the girl who can't speak French!

I don't speak French!

Bath-time and mealtimes seem to be quite conducive to multilingual talk in our family.

Yesterday, during bath-time, the girls were chatting excitedly about all the things they will do during our holiday in Nice.
We will be staying with our friends C (French), A (German) and their four children aged 11, 8, 5 and 1. The children mainly speak French, apart from the oldest who understands and speaks some German.

Promenade des Anglais

BK2, aged 5, then started worrying over her weak French. She had a little voice when she said: "I don't really speak Francais. I speak Arabic, Arabic, Arabic, French; Arabic, Arabic, Arabic, French"; mostly Arabic words interleaved with French vocabulary.

This is the child who whenever urged to stop talking in English at home, and switch to Arabic, would usually go (in Arabic!): "I can't speak Arabic. I can only speak French".

Here she is now showing how knowledgeable she is of her own language capabilities.

As to her not being able to speak French, I have no worries at all. I am sure she will be stringing sentences two days at the latest into our stay. I will report back!

ps: I spent 20 minutes writing this post only to realise afterwards that BabelDad beat me to it!

When OPOL Does Not Work - Exposure, Glamour Factor and Resources

When OPOL does not work, it can be difficult to find the reasons. Many people put it down to lack of exposure to the minority language, oftentimes citing a minimum requirement of 30% to 40% of exposure.

Annabelle from The Piri Piri Lexicon is a linguist. Here she takes apart the "myth" that children need at least 30% exposure to a language in order to acquire it.

Not being a linguist myself, I can only speak of our own experience. We are a quadrilingual family (see our family language diagram):

Mother - Algerian Arabic

Father - German

Mother & Father - French

Majority language outside the home - English

Our two older children (8 and 5) are exposed to English for at least 8 hours a day, between school, friends, after-school activities, TV and books. Knowing that they are roughly awake for 13 hours a day, that leaves 5 hours for the three other languages. So:
English -> 60%
Arabic, French, German -> 40%

Our "method" is OPOMLAH (One Parent One Minority Language At Home). That does not accurately describe it either as we have three minority languages, being myself in charge of transmitting two of these.

According to the 30-40% rule, there would be no way for our children to speak anything but the majority language. In particular they would have no German at all, as they only see their father two hours a day, and that's when he is not away overnight for work (15%).

Let me tell you this is far from being the case. They do speak German, and in the case of the eight-year old, can read and write it. How come?

To start with there is the week-end, which we strive to always spend together, immersed in our three home languages. We travel once  a year to Germany, and get visitors a couple of times a year, for a weekend at a time. We have loads of books and DVDs.

The main advantage we have is: we do not speak English at home.

Both BabelDad and I speak English fluently. We do code-switch, but we only speak French between us, making English the majority language OUTSIDE the home.

The second very important factor is that German is supported by books and DVDs.

Everything has got a name in German. The girls may not know the words, but they can be sure their dad does and will share it.
This is contrary to Algerian Arabic (or Moroccan Arabic) which lacks resources. Books and programmes are in an altogether different language - classical arabic. Also, the Algerian word for car is tounoubil (automobile), a truck is camioune (camion) and a phone is tilifoune (téléphone). The classical Arabic words exist (sayyara, shahina and hatif). But I would never dream to use them in my daily conversations as it would simply be odd.

Moreover, speaking a second language is usually a positive thing, yet not all languages fall into the same tier.

In most western countries, French and German are glamorous. Arabic is not glamorous.

We are fortunate to be in England, where I can feel at ease speaking my language, most of the time. Not sure I would feel the same way in other countries.

In a bilingual family, where one of the home languages is the majority language, the 30%-40% rule makes sense to me. That means that ideally, the main carer should speak the minority language.

However, the facts that:

• the majority language is also a family language
• the minority language is not supported by written and visual resources

could have precipitated the demise of Arabic acquisition in Stephanie's family. If the minority language had been French, or Spanish, or German, then the outcome might have been different.

As Annabelle points out, it is hard for parents to quantify how much exposure their children get to various languages. Even when an approximation is possible, language absorption is subject to exposure, as well as the languages' social status and availability of supporting resources.

Chanterai, chanterais, aurais chanté?

The girls are having a bath, after a lovely sunny day that they spent playing in the garden.

They have their usual plastic boats and bowls to play with in the water. I start singing:

Maman les p'tits bateaux

Qui vont sur l'eau

Ont-ils des jambes?

Mais oui mon grand bêta

S'ils n'en avaient pas

Ils ne marcheraient pas

BK1 then comes up with her own version:

Maman les p'tits bateaux

Qui vont sur l'eau

Ont-ils des jambes?

Mais non mon grand bêta

S'ils en avaient

Ils tricheraient

And that, my friends, is how you learn le conditionnel présent!

It's not Them, it's You!

"With all those languages, aren't you afraid your children won't learn any language properly?"

Heard that before, haven't we?

The latest incarnation came from a French au-pair girl who works for our neighbours. She reported that often, our children wouldn't understand her.

Turns out she based that on the fact that they didn't answer her, giving her the impression she had not reached through.

In reality, they almost certainly did understand everything she said.

But they know that she is monolingual. They knew exactly what they wanted to say, and usually would have said it easily using their vintage Arabic-French mix with some English thrown in, but of course she wouldn't have understood them, and they knew it.

So instead, they decided to just not say anything. Easier.

In essence, the problem here is not that the Babelkids don't understand French. The problem is, in fact, that the au-pair doesn't understand Arabic.

Ha.

On Good Books and Difficult Translations

"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury is on of my favourite books for the babelkids. (I might have mentioned it before.) All three of them like it and BK3 (now 2.5yo) wants to see and hear it pretty much every night currently.

We managed to get three versions of the book: English, French and German.

Now I fully get that translating is a difficult job. Especially for a book that comes with a rythm and all.

(Btw: BK3 has seen this video a couple of times a lot and demands that I do the same routine.)

So how do the French and German version fare? Honestly: sub-par.

The French translation tries to stay close to the text. That works in a sense, because if you know the original, you can read from the French version in English, i.e. translate on the fly. I'm sorry, but the French just doesn't work.

The German version, though, is absolutely abysmal. The translation is trying to stay closer to the pattern, but it does so in a stupidly funny way that I think really doesn't do the book any justice. At all. As in: do NOT buy that.

Yes, I do understand that translating is difficult. Maybe for some really good books it just shouldn't be done at all.

Nochmal auf Deutsch, weil es wichtig ist: Die Deutsche Version ist wirklich schlecht. Lieber die Englische kaufen und ein paar Wörter lernen.

Musings on Spoken and Written Arabic

I borrowed a couple of dual-language books from our library, in Arabic/English and French/English.

So, at bedtime, BK2 and BK1 asked me to read them التيوس الثلاثة الاخوة جروف , better known as The Three Billy Goats Gruff. 

The girls already know the story in English and French. While I was reading the Arabic version, they kept asking what words and sentences meant, particularly BK2. I found myself translating into colloquial Arabic as I went along.

After a while, BK1 asked:
"Is this book written in Qbailia? (Berber language common in Algeria)"
Me: "No! It's Arabic, can you not tell?"
BK1: "Yes, but why is it different from the Arabic we speak?"
Me:  "I agree, it sounds similar yet different. This is classical Arabic, whereas we speak Algerian Arabic, a colloquial form of the first".

At one point, I read طار في الهواء (tara fil hawaa) and I remarked: "Surely you understand this? We say the same thing: طار فلهوى (tar flahwa)" only to be met with a quizzical look: it's totally different!
Thinking about it, it's akin to similarities and differences between English and German (earth vs Erde) or between French and Spanish (terre vs terra). Being able to map words from one idiom to another does not necessarily mean understanding and mastering both languages.

BK1 reads French and German quite fluently, with no effort from our part other than providing her with books that elicit her interest.
It turns out that achieving literacy in Arabic is going to require quite a lot of input from me. The alphabet is the easy bit. Because of the pronounced differences between the Arabic we speak at home and classical Arabic, it is like learning a whole new language almost from scratch...

ps: BK2 is turning 5 this month, and BK1 will be 8 next month.

Food, Glorious Food!

Today, I have literally been cooking up a storm, an international one for that matter: I am making a sticky gingerbread, Thamthunt (Algerian bread) and a veggie Lasagna.

Gingerbread

That's what happens when I'm hungry. Reason: I am fasting. I am making up for a couple of days I missed during Ramadan in August. The BabelDad is fasting too, out of solidarity. He makes fun of me. He says I am a cheat, as I choose the shortest days in the year to fast - sunset is at a measly 3.55 compared to the 10pm+ during summer.

Thamthunt

I tried to enlist BK3's help to keep her busy. But no, whisking eggs and weighing sugar are not good enough tasks for a two-year old. She absolutely needs to stir the hot treacle mix and flatten the bread with dirty hands! (rest assured, I did not let her).

Here I am trying to finish the Bechamel sauce, and tidy up the kitchen before fetching the older two from school. By now, BK3 is running wild, taking the pepper mill apart and climbing on the worktop.

Lasagna

Then, while I put the peanut butter jar in the fridge, her little voice goes:
"Maman, zidee khobz maa beurre de cacahuètes" (mum, more bread with peanut butter).

I was struck by the clarity, fluidity and length of this Franco-Arabic sentence.

What a joy to witness multilingualism developing for the third time in our house!