This aim of this article is to contribute to the development of a socio-cultural model of emergent biliteracy that recognizes the dynamic interactions amongst two languages. The present field study took place in a French-German public Kindergarten class in Alsace, France, where students are in the initial process of learning to read in both languages. The teacher, fluent in both French and German, created a translanguaging space where a simultaneous biliterate practice using cognates (or words in two languages that share similar print characteristics and meaning), and identical and non-identical false cognates (words that share all or some print characteristics in both languages but not the same meaning) could be enacted. The selected words enabled these five year olds to engage in a simultaneous biliterate practice that highlighted the students' interlinguistic abilities specific to print, phonology and meaning across languages.