My three year old recently came home from playgroup with a new word. Which no doubt has got the poor boy very confused. The word in question is ‘Nein’ (the German for ‘no’); which he likes to follow with the word ‘ten’.

Strasbourg’s location and history means that the German language is used a great deal in Alsace in addition to the unofficial local dialect (Alsatian) which is basically an Olde Wurlde version of German.

So there we were worrying about the affects of a bilingual environment on our child - when really we should have been worrying about the affects of a polyglot environment!