Ottawa is a bi-lingual city, with government services in both French and English. So it seemed logical - when our children were young - to send them to schools where they would have the opportunity to learn both languages equally. When they were 4, all began their bi-lingual education by attending a half-day kindergarten program where they alternated between a French teacher one day and an English teacher the next.
It was a great opportunity to learn French at an early age.... But occasionally linguistic confusions occurred!
One day, when my son came home from kindergarten and I was washing out his snack containers, I noticed some orange liquid in his little thermos.
Why didn't you drink all your juice? I asked him.
There was glass in it, he replied.
Glass?!! I panicked. But the thermos is plastic! How could glass get into it?! Are you okay?! I hope you didn't swallow any glass!!
Not that kind of glass, he said calmly.
Then I realized what he was trying to tell me: To keep the juice cold, I had put a few ice cubes into the thermos. He had drunk the juice, but left the ice, which had melted, and now looked like juice.
My son was trying to tell me that he hadn't left any juice in his thermos, he had just left ice. (Ice is "glace" in French, but pronounced the same as "glass" in English!)
(I was reminded of this incident because sometimes on the road, at this time of year, pieces of ice - or "glace" - look just like broken "glass"!)
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