I'm glad I speak English -- and I'm glad Amy does, too

[pne]

As I'm reading documentation for yet another program we'll be using, I'm extremely grateful for the fact that I learned English.

Knowing English is simply indispensible in IT, and having a good command from it (enabling you to pick up information easily without having to laboriously decode information written in a language you learned only imperfectly) is really useful.

I'm glad I grew up bilingually and had the opportunity to attend an English-speaking school, further increasing my fluency.

---

And, relatedly, I'm extremely chuffed at the progress Amy is making. I'm glad that she speaks English to me, and I'm amazed at how well she is doing in her English, given that she basically only speaks it with me and I'm not at home for all that long during a typical day.

But she can express nearly everything she wants to in English, and she's getting better every day at keeping English and German apart (e.g. using different prepositions depending on the language, or otherwise picking the appropriate construction).

She's also getting better at inferring rules and remembering exceptions to them. For example, this morning, she mentioned that she sometimes speaks English to Stella, and I said she could teach her English, and Amy said that she could be "an English teacher".

That's the first time I can recall that she used "an" appropriately when not prompted; she used to use "a" always. (On the other hand, she talked about being "an 'English 'teacher" rather than "an 'English teacher", but I was still happy.)