American in Spain

Interviewing Ian – Bilingual One Year Old

March 5, 2015

Last night, as often seems to happen, Ian decided that no, actually, he wasn't sleepy at bedtime. So I had to bring him downstairs. He managed to veg out with the television for a bit while I finished my workday, and then we played for a bit. At one point he came into my office and wanted to sit on my lap, and he was doing adorable things, so I got out my phone and interviewed him. He does pretty well at identifying parts of his body in both languages. This really surprised me the first time I tested him, months ago, in English, because his Spanish grandparents had been teaching him the parts in Spanish. I had never explicitly told him what the word "mouth" or "ear" means, but he knew. Warning, the video below contains near-lethal levels of cuteness. If you have a heart condition or something, you may want to watch it in several sittings.

When I said "ojos", he thought I said "mocos", which is Spanish for "snot", hence the nose blowing. The final word is "agur", which is "goodbye" in Basque.