Pardon My French

My son is learning French from a rat. We got him a Ratatouille Leap Pad book/cartridge, and on Sunday I first noticed it had a little "French lesson" page that teaches a few common phrases. Being fluent in French (and by "fluent" I mean I've forgotten almost everything I ever learned) I knew the ones Addison was learning and could help him with pronunciation and a few extra phrases related to the ones he was learning. You know, he learns good morning (bon matin), I feed him goodnight (bon nuit). I'm probably butchering it already.

Anyway, we've done some foreign language stuff with Addison before, and he likes it . . . but it has always been memorizing foreign language words for the heck of it. He never showed any interest in actually using the words or expressions to convey what he really wanted to say. But this time was different.

When the rat told him to say, "Je t'aime," he said it, he understood it, and then he put down the Leap Pad, walked over to me, gave me a hug and said, "Je t'aime."

"Je t'aime, aussi."

Then tonight as I was putting to bed, he started asking how to say different things. Just random expressions. Then I told him, "Je t'aime." He gave me a kiss and said, "Je t'aime, too." And then he asked me how to say, "goodbye." "Au revoir," I told him. "Ollivalor," he said. We worked on it for a few rounds, but . . . it's so hard to pick up the intricacies of the French language on an electronic toy, but Addison's pretty sure he heard it right.

I told him we better stick with bon nuit.