Thursday, June 04, 2009

Cool!

It certainly is a distant land, this Eastern realm. We left Dunoon yesterday in 21º of warmth, and two hours later the car said 13º in the shade. (OK, Mal's sheltered garden was really warm, and after a glass of bubbly I wasn't caring - happy birthday, Mal!) And today it's greyish and still cool, so that coffee and croissants in Ocean Terminal seemed a safer bet than sitting outside. (I learned the French for greyish quite early in my career - there was an old horse called Grisatre in a book we had to read in S2, Jean Bonnard, Petit Ecolier)

And talking of French, it's fascinating to watch the development of a bilingual child. At 21 months, she counts un, deux or one, two, apparently depending on who's listening. She knows all her features in French, and nose in English (it's running just now). She was trying to say mouillé about her damp face, but I'm afraid I corrupted this by saying mingin' (her mouth was rimmed with jam at the time) and now she's saying mingin' with glee. And she says mine firmly in a passable Edinburgh voice and clutches the desired object equally firmly, just in case there's any doubt. And I expect her to break into the Marseillaise when we set off on a walk, though so far she shouts marcher rather than marchons.

All great fun, and totally knackering. She's just fallen asleep and I feel a little peckish again. A spot of lunch, I think, before la petite wakens again...

1 comment:

  1. Hmm....sounds like "our" weather has moved eastward across the pond!It is slowly warming up, but seems the weather seems to teeter-totter back and forth!

    Oh to be bilingual! When I asked (begged) my father to teach me his Ukrainian tongue, he refused. I guess the fact that his older siblings had to learn English upon entering school was enough to make him think the mother tongue was of little or no value. So I thought.

    When my father met Mark's mother, we all giggled as they argued back and forth about pronunciation of various words! That made me realize had my father taught me Ukrainian, it *might* have been a little "corrupted"!

    Oh, and I rather like the Scottish term "dreich". It says so much in such a little word!!!!!!

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