Way To Go, Monkey!

Now that S is using her German more often, she has more opportunity to run into problems.... problems such as a particular English verb denoting two different German verbs conveying different meanings.

As in the word 'missed'.

It is, of course, entirely appropriate to say, "I really missed Papa last night." when said Papa was out of town. It is also fine to say, "O is sad because he missed the ice cream truck." when her little brother didn't make it to the window in time and cried over his misfortune (it is so difficult being two).

Same word, different meaning.
Not so in German. Of course.

In the first case, the 'missed' is vermisst - as in having been sad that she didn't get to see Papa at night [Gestern Abend habe ich Papa wirklich vermisst.]. In the case of the ice cream truck, the word is verpasst - as in not having seen something that zipped by outside [O ist traurig weil er den Eiswagen verpasst hat.].

Poor child :)

She's been having problems with this for the past couple of weeks and often said something like "O hat den Eiswagen vermisst!" when she should have said "O hat den Eiswagen verpasst." She has asked for the explanation numerous times and kept trying to get it right, but it was obvious she was guessing.

The other day, though, she got it. And she knew she got it, judging by the smirk on her face when she said it correctly. And since then, she's completely given up trying to use either of the verbs correctly. I am assuming here it's because she really does know and no longer needs the practice, rather than that she's given up trying to figure it out. And I do think I'm right about this, since the look on her face really said it all.

It shows, of course, that German is a foreign language to her and that she's translating rather than just using it as a native speaker would. This is not new to me, as she often also uses the English sentence structure when speaking German. This makes her German grammar a bit suspect, but I don't worry about that too much at this point. With more practice, it will hopefully sort itself out.

It was nice to see the sense of accomplishment on her face. And it makes me wish I would have expected her to speak German to me all along, rather than just assuming she'd pick it up along the way. I know that right now being bilingual means nothing to her, but I hope that in time this will change and she'll be truly happy that she speaks more than one language.