My 5 year old son Nick likes warriors and fighting. He wanted to play with me and gave me a Starwars soldier. I told him, that I would gladly play with him, but he has to make from play dough a character, that will be strong enough to fight with my soldier and gave him time – 5 minutes.

He managed his task rather quickly and came to me. (here I should have asked him questions regarding his character, like why did he choose such colour,  what does his character like, where is he from…but this idea came to me much later); I told him, that my soldier speaks only English, because the film was made in America and all characters in the film speak English.

So I started conversation for the Soldier – Hello! (Son with his character replied Hello)Then I asked – What’s your name? (My son started to speak an imaginary language, explaining that this is the language of his character. I smiled and explained that he wanted to play with my soldier,  he speaks only English , so if he want to fight with him, he has to speak English to him. So I silently translated what the Soldier asked and silently whispered to my son what he should answer in English. Nick repeated my phrases during the dialogue and I translated to him what the soldier told. Then the warriors fought and waved each other goodbye.

After this game my daughter Dana (3 y.o.) came to me and gave me a horse. She was carrying a toy for herself. The dialogue repeated (and Dana also started to speak an imaginary language and I switched her into English).

I do play such games from time to time with my children. They regularly watch English cartoons, documentaries. In our everyday conversation English occasionally appears, but very seldom. My son likes to greet our family friends with Hello! At the moment this is the second word that he seems to know. The first was “Dinosaur!” from Peppa Pig series.