Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Animal Sound Fun

Sawyer loves a large animal/alphabet book that he has. He enjoys pointing out animals and hearing their names, their sounds, and imitating. Check out his wolf howl:



Something we've never really figured out is his love for the chimpanzee. Not so much the animal, but the animal's name. He's seen chimps at the zoo and gave a nonchalant flippant glance. You say the name, however, and he cracks up. Chimpanzee! Haha. Chimpanzee! Haha.



We've heard that multilingual babies are often slow to speak. Sawyer's a true example of this. He spent the first six months of his life in East Africa, where in addition to his parents' American English he heard Swahili on a daily basis. Then a few months in KY, where he heard a version of American English... Then we moved to France. He's 20 months old now and has just a handful of words that we can understand: things like ball, doggie, daddy, mama, cracker, hi, byebye. He only has one distinctly French word that he uses consistently, which is "eau," the French word for water (pronounced 'oh', it's quite a bit easier to say than 'water', so we know he's learned efficiency at an early age). Maybe some of the other sounds he makes are French words we don't know, it's possible!. We've heard him once or twice mutter something resembling "au revoir," but often not at the right time. Today, however, he blew us away. We spent a few hours in the home of a French person we recently met, and talked and talked in our new language (will share more on that conversation another day... some interesting insights). As we were leaving, she said "au revoir" to Sawyer, and he said it back! About 6 times. And I'm pretty sure his pronunciation was better than his dad's. Way to go pal!

Before we go, Sawyer has an important announcement:



Yup. #2's on its way. The sequel to an African-American story, this time French-fried. Coming soon to a French apartment near you. Sometime in May.

1 comment:

Me said...

Congratulations on French-Fry!