Comments on: No, I am eating peas — phonetics, syntax, and aspect

By: juliloquy

juliloquy — Wed, 30 May 2007 16:30:01 +0000

Shmooie’s got the s + consonant thing going on, too, but his replacements vary depending on the blend. For instance, school bus is “goo bus,” stool is “dool,” and Shmoo is, simply, “shoe.” I agree, toddlers are very fart.

By: DarkoV

DarkoV — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:48:34 +0000

I won’t pile on with further Tales of Children’s Linguistic Travails.
I see what you’re doing.
You’re cornering the Euro-market on pix & heart-warming and jowl-giggling stories of your two sons. I’m even beginning to suspect that the Jez came along not through careful birth planning but through the pressure, perhaps self-inflicted, of producing on almost a daily basis, an interesting snippet of family life. You needed material. Adam was getting tired of being the cornucopia of all thing kid-dom. Your lovely spouse, once again, bailed you out of trouble by, literally, producing new material.

Now, with one prestigious award in hand, you’re clearly aiming for the Euro-parental awards that are most probably waiting to be carved with your initials.

By: simon

simon — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:41:38 +0000

And I’m back with the Luxembourgish flag…

By: simon

simon — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:41:13 +0000

Chiara’s coping more or less with three languages as well (English, Italian, French). Has problems with prepositions sometimes, thinking that they’re part of the noun, so she points to her coat and says ‘coaton’ (as in “Please put your coat on, Chiara”). She’s not yet got the hang of the rolled ‘r’, converting it into either an ‘l’ or an ‘h’ (i.e. ‘Chiala’, or sometimes ‘Chia-ha’, as the mood takes her).

By: Elsa

Elsa — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:04:11 +0000

Hey, and can I have a flag that indicates "of Scottish and Swedish blood, born in the U.S., citizen of the world"?

By: Elsa

Elsa — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:50:33 +0000

Faith and I agree: linguistics makes us feel our brains.

By: sgazzetti

sgazzetti — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:31:11 +0000

Idaki: Thanks and welcome! You are not the first to be less than satisfied with the whole flag thing. I'll see what I can do about overriding the system to acommodate your interesting situation.

By: Idaki

Idaki — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:56:42 +0000

I’m very glad I discovered your blog via the Satin Pajama awards – you’re writing beautifully, and I’m enough of a nerd to appreciate the jokes, as well as enough of a psychologist with a partiality for developmental psychology and language acquisition to relish in the descriptions of your sons’ growing up.

Oh, and I want a flag to show “Greek expat living in the UK and accessing the net via Florida-based company server” :)

By: sgazzetti

sgazzetti — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:30:27 +0000

I was teased mercilessly for my difficulty with /s/ in general and /sh/ in particular. Adam seems to be exhibiting this, too (it is an exception to the phonetic rule above), and it is pretty adorable, NOW.

The ‘behave’ story happened in our family, too — it must be a common case of rule extension or something.

By: Jane

Jane — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:26:03 +0000

I love these nerdy linguistic posts. Language acquisition is so interesting and mysterious.

[WARNING: Anecdotes ahead. Proceed with caution.]

When I was little I went through a pronunciation phase that involved pronouncing some words (”stone” being but one example) first in old English, then middle, and then, with much coaxing, modern English. I don’t know why or how but it amused my family (of nerds, obviously) to no end.

A friend’s niece went through a phase at Adam’s age of saying “wust” (with the u = “oo” in wood) for “just”.

And last but not least, when my boss told his toddler sons to behave, they responded with “We’re being haved!”