BB: Bilingual Boy

Warning: this is a geek post about language, so probably only of interest to Anita, and possibly Ingrid, who share - or pretend to! - my fascination with all things language-related.
The rest of you can feel free to skip it, I won't be offended.

I have never read any books about bilingualism (I prefer novels to pretty much any kind of educational or psychological guide, though I did enjoy "Eat, Pray, Love": sorry, I digress...), so I'm basically just following my instincts as far as my boys are concerned.
I always make sure I speak to them in English, and I hope this in itself will be sufficient to ensure a very high level of bilingualism.
Beyond that, I haven't given a lot of thought to the the actual process of language acquisition by young kids. But I listen and observe, and it's all turning out to be pretty fascinating (to a language geek like me).

Up until now, I guess what has struck me most is how instinctive it all is. BB will use the word that comes into his head first: so some things he says in English, others in French. I see that there is little reflection involved; it's a pick n' mix based on personal preference and familiarity (for example, some words he hears more often from me, so it's logical he'll repeat them in English. Etc.).

So my ears really pricked up yesterday afternoon as we watching Fireman Sam together in English. The episode in question was that "renowned classic" (what? you don't know it??) involving a faulty van, a homemade cart, a naughty boy called Norman and a dummy.
The dummy being an inflatable doll, of course: used by Fireman Sam in his safety demonstrations.
Anyway, as the plot thickened, BB piped up "Look Maman, the sucette has gone!"
The sucette??
Ah, suddenly I got it. "Sucette" is dummy in French, but in the sense of a suckable object for babies of course.
So I realised that in fact, rather than simply associating a word with an object in an instinctive manner, BB was actually translating in his head from one language to another!

Imagine my excitement (if you can). This puts him on a whole different intellectual plane, as far as I can see. Because sure, even though his translation was wrong (a dummy in the sense of inflatable doll would be called something entirely different in French), the fact he could actually do it amazed me.

Amazed as I was though, I still found it quite tricky explaining why a dummy was not a "sucette"... Not sure he's quite up to comprehending multiple translation possibilities... (a four-year university degree suffices for most people, though).