First Sentence

As part of the permanent record, I should have mentioned that on Saturday morning Maddie uttered her first complete sentence. We were standing in the backyard and she was trying to force her way into the frost-covered sandbox and had been getting some assistance from her big sister, who eventually wandered off to chase a bug or pick a dead flower or something. Maddie didn’t notice that Molli Malou had left the immediate area until she suddenly looked around and exclaimed, in crystal clear Danish, “Hvor er Molli hen?“

That’s a perfectly formed Danish question: “Where is Molli?” (Literally, “Where is Molli hence?” — remember, it’s still the Danish of Shakespeare.)

She’s also picked up a few compound words and phrases. “Apple juice” was just picked up this weekend (abbelzhoos!), and she mastered Danish versions of shoes on, shoes off, jacket on, and jacket off weeks ago, maybe months ago. She seems to be grasping the bilingual thing and is beginning to speak a little differently with me than with Trine. Most of her words at this point are Danish; the same was true with Molli Malou. One interesting difference for Maddie’s linguistic development is that she has one person who only speaks English to her, one who only speaks Danish — and one who speaks her own peculiar versions of both and often weaves them together into a charming Danglish.