Monday, June 11, 2012

Latest Hits, by E.

"Row, row, row your boat/ Get me down the stream!/ Mewily, mewily, mewily,...[unintelligible] butta....sketty!" followed by hysterical laughter, because the joke is that instead of saying the thing about life being a dream, she's saying life's a bowl of spaghetti.  It's a mash-up of "Row Your Boat" and some song from Dora.  There's maybe a certain philosophical truth to it, too.  Another one: "Knock, knock!" [you say "who's there?"] "Rupping...moooo!  Get it?  Mooo?"  It's her take on the "interrupting cow" joke.  I like the part where she asks you if you get it.

Then there's:
"Spicycle" (bicycle)
"Smustache" (mustache)
"Bace" (her friend Grace)
"Don't pie." (don't cry.  Alternative: "Baby pyin'?")
"I'm really hummy!" (I'm really hungry)
"Ice keem" (tough one to guess)

She has trouble with some words that start with double consonants, as most kids her age do, but Avery never did.  It's delightful, though, seeing the language development the way it typically happens.  It was delightful the other way too, don't get me wrong - there's nothing like a toddler who speaks in full, extremely clear sentences before her peers are even saying "Mommy" to give a parent a swelled head (even though it has very little to do with you).  A friend of ours who's a language buff pointed out that language develops in kids the same way it developed in the human race, so as a language gets older, words shrink and consonants that were formerly separated by a vowel get scrunched together.  Little kids have to develop the physical capacity to say those compacted words.  Interesting.















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