One game that just about every parent plays with their children is “peek-a-boo”.  Everyone should know this game, but just in case you don’t, here’s how you play:

1. Cover your face with your hands or some other object.
2. Say to your baby “Where’s Daddy (or Mommy or whatever)?”
3. Reveal yourself and say “Peek-a-boo”.

Once kids get older and smarter, they can cover their faces and do it to you too.

Naturally kids love it. Not just kids in English-speaking families, but all over the world. So I learned how to play Peek-a-boo in Japanese and Swedish. It’s really easy.

Japanese

In Japanese, Peek-a-boo is called いない、いない、ばぁ！ (inai, inai, ba!). You play like this:

1. Cover your face with your hands
2. Say “inai inai, ba!”, revealing your face on “ba”

“Inai, inai” means something like “not here, not here”. And “ba” just means “boo”.

Here are some videos of random Japanese kids playing Inai Inai Ba!:

Now you can play with your kids too!

Swedish

In Swedish, peek-a-boo is called “Tittut”. You play like this:

1. Cover your face with your hands or some other object
2. Say “Var är Pappa (or Momma)?”
3. Reveal yourself while saying “Tittut!”

“Var är Pappa/Momma?” means “Where is Daddy/Mommy?” “Tittut” means something like “Look!” (from the verb “titta” I think).

Here are some videos of random Swedish people playing Tittut:

How about in your language?

I have a favor to ask. I want to know how to play peek-a-boo in more languages and share it with everyone else. If you speak, or are learning to speak, a language other than English, Japanese or Swedish, post a comment and tell us how to play peek-a-boo in your language.

Related posts:

1. Learn Swedish With Online Swedish Radio
2. Multilingual Parenting
3. Starting Swedish

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but the other day it suddenly hit me that I can write about it on this blog (a big duh moment for me). So, I’ve added a new “Multilingual Parenting” category to the blog and from time to time I will post about my experiences trying to raise my son to be multilingual.

Why “multilingual” and not “bilingual”? That’s the fun part. In addition to English and Japanese, I’m going to expose my son to as much Swedish as I possibly can. You may remember that I’ve been learning Swedish children’s songs. There was a reason for that beyond my own personal love for “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. I wanted to be able to sing to my son in Swedish!

But Thomas, how can you raise your son to speak Swedish if you don’t speak Swedish yourself? That’s the fun part. It’s a no-pressure experiment and I get to learn Swedish along the way! If you think about it, when we communicate with a 9 month old child, we don’t need to say very complex things. Conversations are one-way and consist of sentences like this:

Look at the flower.
This is a monkey.
Let’s eat some carrots. Open your mouth.
What a big boy you are!

With a little preparation, I think I can pull this off in Swedish. :)

And so it begins! I look forward to seeing how little Noah will progress. I know I’ll have some fun stories to share and hopefully I can hit some language topics that are a little out of the ordinary. Do you know how to play “peek-a-boo” in Japanese or Swedish? I had fun learning how and I’ll teach it to you in a future post.

Will keep you up to date!

Related posts:

1. Japanese and Swedish Peek-a-boo
2. Starting Swedish
3. Learn Swedish With Online Swedish Radio