August 2012

This book describes the current scientific understanding of how children learn a language in their first two years. It is a thorough book but very readable. It is a translation from a French book.

The book is full of fun facts:

• Babies will babble in a lower pitch to their father than to their mother.
• Babies at 8 to 9 months already have a feel for which words "sound right". American babies were less interested in Dutch words such as "zwetsen" and "vlakte" which contain "zw" and "vl" sounds that don't appear in English words.
• Fairly early on, baby babbling will pick up the melody of the mother language. So French babies babble differently than American or Chinese babies, and adults can often tell what a baby's mother tongue is.

I was mostly interested in the developments during the first year, since Nora is now almost 6 months old. Still the remainder of the book was interesting as well, with several case studies of children in France and the USA and every child's language style.

The book is not primarily about dual language kids but the author enjoys pointing out the cultural differences between various countries. French children for example, know more food-words at an early age, Swedish kids more words for activities and American kids more nouns.

I picked this book when I went to the Arlington library with my parents.

This was a moving story, about a rich workaholic who, after losing his job and his wife, rebuilds his life by working at Starbucks.

It was an enjoyable read.

Mieke sent me this book from the Netherlands which is why I read it in Dutch, in a good translation.

This book gives an excellent overview of the recent history of Arlington County, and the long chapter with "controversies" is especially interesting.

The author, Mr. Pratt, is a long-time activist in County politic. He was personally involved in many events described in the book, sometimes in his professional function as a lawyer, and in the 1970's he tried to get elected to the County Board twice.

Mr. Pratt lives in South Arlington, and his political views tend to lean more Republican than Democrat. As he explains in the book, local politics have been dominated by Democrats for decades and it was interesting to read his contrarian point of view. The book is a very objective one though, and both sides of the stories are told.

I didn't realize the extend of the differences between North and South Arlington. For example, we live close to I-66 and I knew that there had been a major "battle" in the 1960's against the creation of that highway. Mr. Pratt explained that in North Arlington the highway was very unpopular (as I knew) -- but I didn't realize that the highway would actually alleviate the traffic problems lower in the County.

On a longer timescale, it was interesting to learn more about the history of Arlington. The County really transformed from a rural, conservative backwater to the liberal, urban "village" it is now. The book describes the racism that was rampant in the early years of the county, and the political "massive resistance" fight against school integration. It's hard to believe that such policies were advocated only so short ago.

The book is from 1997 and certain developments, such as the cleanup and development of the Potomac Yard obviously are not included. Perhaps it's time for a follow-up book.