up, down (to a baby, young child)

[joshisanonymous]

In English, with a toddler learning to speak, you would generally teach them up and down for when they want to be picked up or set down. It works well because they're both simple, one syllable words. Is there something like this in French? My assumption is that you could just say haut and bas, but those alone don't feel idiomatic at all for adult speech.

 

[Salvatos]

You wouldn’t say haut and bas; it’s hard to explain, but essentially they don’t match what you say when going up in someone’s arms or being put back down.

The answer is going to vary by region or even by family, but for down I think I’ve heard most of my friends (Quebec French) focus on "à terre" (tu veux aller à terre?), since even though the R is a difficult sound to master, it’s easy to recognize an approximation of "terre" among a handful of known words.
For up, I think most of them focus on "bras" (tu veux venir dans mes bras?).

Note that I’ve mostly heard the parents before or while the toddlers were learning to actually say the words, so I don’t know how well those particular choices worked out for them

 

[kiwineko]

for up we would say something like "les bras / tu veux les bras ?" or for only one word "debout/bras?".
for down we would use "descendre / tu veux descendre ?"

 

[Chat Perché]

Hello everyone,
I cannot think of short words or verbs which are used in France in the same way as 'up' or 'down'. I would say to a toddler :
For 'up' : Je te porte ?
Tu veux que je te prennes ?
Tu veux que je te porte ?
For 'down': Tu veux descendre ?
Tu descends ?
The funny thing is that toddler may end up by saying 'Je te porte ?' instead ''Tu me portes ?' but this can be easily rectified !

 

[kiwineko]

For up we say « au cou « also.

 

[kourdo]

For my children I used 'les bras' ou 'bras' (est ce que tu veux les venir dans les bras) pour up et 'descendre' ou 'a terre, au sol' pour down (tu veux descendre? Tu veux que je te remette à terre (ou au sol)). that's usually what I hear at the crèche.

 

[moustic]

For short expressions used with toddlers, I've always used "à bras" for picking up and "à terre" for putting down.

à bras - Exclamation prononcée par un petit enfant pour qu'on le porte dans les bras. WIKTIONNAIRE

 

[Sandalman]

Bras / Terre are also the main keywords I remember from my friends/family and myself