French with a baby
Your baby will not say a French word for a long time, and that is not the point yet. At this stage you are pouring sound in. Their job is to work out which sounds matter in the languages they keep hearing, and every hour of French you speak near them is data for that decision.
Volume of speech beats quality of French
The single biggest lever at this age is how much your baby hears, not how correct it is. Narrate what your hands are doing as you feed them, change them, dress them. On met la couche. Voilà, tout propre. It feels like talking to yourself because it is, and it is also the entire curriculum.
Name what they are already looking at
Follow their eyes, then say the word. Whatever has their attention is the word that will stick, because the meaning is right there in front of them. Le chat. Regarde le chat. Un joli chat. Say it three ways and stop.
Ask questions, and treat a coo as an answer
Ask them things. When the answer comes back as a coo or a gurgle, meet it with a smile and your eyes. That exchange is a conversation with the words missing, and it teaches turn-taking, which is the shape every real conversation will take later. Babies who get answered try again.
Slow down, and let them watch your mouth
Drop your pace, lift your pitch a little, and keep sentences short. Let your baby see your face while you talk, because they are studying how your mouth makes the shapes. Salut. Dodo. Coucou. A handful of small words said many, many times.
Say the name, not the pronoun
C'est le café de maman is far easier for a baby than c'est mon café. Pronouns move around depending on who is speaking, which is a puzzle they cannot solve yet. Names hold still. Use them: le nounours de Sarah, les chaussettes de papa.
Repetition you find boring is repetition that works
Sing the same lullaby every night. Point at the same tree on the same walk. Say the same phrase at the same moment of the nappy change. It is dull for you and fascinating for them, and it is exactly how a sound turns into a word that means something.
The seven steps, so you know what you are watching
Language arrives in an order: sounds, then syllables, then nouns, then verbs, then short sentences, then word order, then grammar. Your baby is on step one, sorting which sounds matter. You do not need to teach the steps. Knowing they exist just means the silence stops feeling like nothing is happening.
French lifts the end, English hits the front
Say water and you punch the first bit, WA-ter. Say l'eau and the weight arrives at the end. Babies pick up this pattern long before they pick up words, and they use it to tell your two languages apart. So let your French sound French, even when the words are few.
The first words worth saying often
None of these need a reply. Say them at the same moment every day and let the repetition do the work.
- Coucou ! Peekaboo, or hello koo-KOO
- Salut Hi sa-LU (rounded lips on the u)
- Fais dodo Go to sleep fay do-do
- On met la couche Nappy going on on may la KOOSH
- Tout propre ! All clean! too PROPR
- Regarde ! Look! ruh-GARD
- À bras Up you come ah BRAH
- Au revoir, l'avion Bye bye, aeroplane oh ruh-VWAR, la-VYON
See the full stage-by-stage guide, from the womb to school age →