Earlier, I wrote about codeswitching and I gave some examples of my three-year-old daughter. In the mean time, my son turned 2 and likes to chat just as much as his sister. He also mixes Dutch and Italian, but has his own way of doing so. I noticed that he especially likes to switch the prepositions:
We gaan con opa
We’re going with grandpa
Ga maar sopra
Go up[stairs]
Plak maar sul auto
Stick it on the car
Sometimes, when he’s playing, he just connects ‘standard’ sentences:
Doe maar, va bene. Non ci entrare, dat past niet!
Go on, it’s OK. Don’t go in there, it won’t fit!
Whereas my son still mixes his languages, I see that my daughter prefers to avoid doing so. And she even wants to ‘help’ me not to do it…
The other day, I codeswitched myself when I said to my husband: “Sará dentro lo schuurtje” (“it’s probably in the shed”).
She corrected me and said: “mom, you should say ‘casetta’.”
Speaking more languages 