I want to catch she

[pne]

Interestingly enough, while Amy distinguishes he from him, she uses she indiscriminately for subject and object use (though whether she'll use the masculine, feminine, or neuter pronoun is mostly random; masculine is the most common).

Presumably, the use of objective she (example from today: "I want to catch she!") is related to the fact that that's how it is in German: the masculine pronoun has different forms for nominative and accusative (er, ihn) while the feminine is the same in both cases (sie).

Yet she distinguishes "gloves" from "mittens" fairly reliably, even though they're typically the same in German ("Handschuhe", i.e. "hand-shoes", though one can make a distinction as "Fingerhandschuhe" and "Fäustlinge"). So making more distinctions in English than in German is not unknown for her, and she does make a subjective/objective case distinction for he/him... Interesting.

Comments

[ghewgill.livejournal.com]

You should save all these journal entries about Amy's language learning, bind them into a book, and present it to her on graduation or something. :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hee -- yeah. Especially is she goes on to study linguistics or something :)

I do try to remember to tag all such entries; hopefully it'll help me find them later (whether from the journal or a backup/dump).

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

I know I've been quite unreliable on LJ for the last year or so, and I've not read my friends page in a few months (been SO terrible!!) but I just wanted to say I do especially enjoy reading about Amy's language learning. I've always been so jealous/ proud of friends who have grown up speaking more than one language that I find it very interesting to see how one goes about learning more than one language at a time at that age.

One thing I've meant to ask before though is - out of German and English, which language does she actually speak the most?

[pne.livejournal.com]

I've not read my friends page in a few months (been SO terrible!!)

No worries!

I usually feel bad when I don't have time to read my friends page, since I feel I'm missing things happening in my friends' lives, but I think one shouldn't feel obligated to keep up if there are other things in your life.

out of German and English, which language does she actually speak the most?

German, hands down.

It's no doubt a factor that Stella - whom she sees for a lot more hours in the day than me - speaks German to her.

Also that the children around her speak German, but the mother effect might be stronger given that Amy's cousins speak better English than German (AFAIK), and my sister speaks to them in English.

Though their German is also decent, and Amy will speak to them in German since they obviously understand it and respond in that language :) Even though English is their "main" language. I wonder whether she feels weird speaking English to someone other than me, or whether she just speaks German to them because it's easier for her and she can get away with it.

Also, when she's playing by herself and (she thinks) nobody is listening, she'll speak German about 95% of the time, though she does occasionally speak English to herself.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Have you checked whether you uses "her" for German "ihr", too? I remember that when I started learning English at school I found it difficult to correctly use "her" rather than "she" when "her" corresponded to German "sie", but not when "her" corresponded to German "ihr".

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Ok, that was too ambiguous. I meant the dative/indirect object pronoun "her", not the possessive pronoun "her"/"ihr", which I assume she uses correctly. So basically what I'm curious about is if she uses the German distinction: "her" ("ihr") for possessive and indirect object and "she" ("sie") for subject and direct object.

[pne.livejournal.com]

the possessive pronoun "her"/"ihr", which I assume she uses correctly.

Well -- she uses it sometimes when a possessive pronoun is called for. But as I wrote elsewhere, she tends to use feminine and masculine forms interchangeably, with the masculine ones more often, I think.

And I'm not sure whether she uses dative/indirect object pronouns - I think she tends to use periphrastic workarounds involving prepositions, e.g. "Give it to me" in English and "Gib das zu mich [sic]" in German.

[conuly]

Faustlinge? I get Fingerhandschuhe!

And I don't know if her use of "she" has to do with the German. I know two or three monolingual children who have similar pronoun problems. One, notably, consistently used "him" or "her" in place of "he" and "she" up until she started Kindergarten here at five!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Faustlinge? I get Fingerhandschuhe!

"Fäustlinge" is "mittens". Presumably from "Faust" = "fist" + "-ling" = "-ling", so "fistlings".

One, notably, consistently used "him" or "her" in place of "he" and "she" up until she started Kindergarten here at five!

That's interesting!

Especially since that sort of thing gives lots of clues as to how real-world languages evolved :) IIRC, that sort of "mistake" is standard in, for example, Italian, where "egli" and "ella" are rarely used and "lui" and "lei" tend to be used instead, even in subject position.

I'm always amused/intrigued/fascinated when I see Amy making a grammatical "mistake" that ends up being just like a correct grammatical construction in another language - especially if I know that an ancestor of that language uses a construction similar to what's considered "correct" in English or German instead.