Staying with good friends - the Anglo-French couple - in Bristol, I am pondering the acquisition of language and, more specifically, bi-lingualism.
Their daughter, all curls and extreme obsession with 'Charlie and Lola', is two. She swings from determined babble, which you can tell is communicating something specific from the tone of voice, to imitation and repetition, to almost fully formed sentences and questions.
She has also moved rapidly from combining French and English words - seemingly unable to differentate the languages - to a careful selection of the one most appropriate to the audience. French for daddy, and English for mummy, although both parents speak to her in both languages.
Fascinating. And very, very cute. I wish I knew more about the development of language: there is clearly some inherent ability to moderate language to audience even before the language capacity is fully developed.
On the same subject, I loved the story of the US linguist who spoke only Klingon to his child as an experiment: at the age of three, the child stopped paying attention to him.
A lesson to us all!
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