Amy's language

[pne]

Amy's started using more English to me in the past week -- I wonder whether this is because I've been home more often now that the project in Wolfsburg is over (either because she hears he more often or because she's forgiven me for my absentee-Dad-ism).

I was sometimes a bit sad that for quite a while, she spoke more German to me than before, especially when she used German colour words -- since she had learned those in English first, so I know she knew them and for a while they were the only colour words she knew at all.

Stella wondered whether Amy was trying to learn one language properly -- and it's true that her sentence structure has become more complex and she's started using prepositions.

Still no copula, though -- she'd fit in well with languages such as Russian or Arabic :) For example, "Ich eine Prinzess!" (the last word being a hybrid of German "Prinzessin" and English "princess"), or "Alle Kinder müde!" (with "Alle Kinder", literally "all the children", being Amy-ish for "everyone").

Comments

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

Copula ought to be troublesome for her, I think. It's irregular in both English and German, and (unlike many other words), the English and German forms are not transparently similar enough to eachother to form "Prinzess"-style hybrids.

[pne.livejournal.com]

(unlike many other words), the English and German forms are not transparently similar enough to eachother to form "Prinzess"-style hybrids.

Eh? I'd say they are for third person singular, which is a pretty useful form -- English [Iz] and German [Ist] (or colloquially [Is]) are not that far from one another.

You're right that the other forms are pretty much distinct.

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I was clearly being overly-sensitive to the distinction there. /Is/ ~ /Iz/ is pretty close.