Monday, July 28, 2008

I'm dook!

Children's language ability amazes me. The amount of rules that they learn and then the acceptions to them. And then if they are learning more than one language....

Samuel was a very clear speaker from the beginning. He had little/no trouble distinguishing Spanish from English. I remember he used to play with this little train set and their was a mummy. He would call it a "mami-O" instead of a momia. He'd do the same thing (flip a word) when we'd read "The Hungry Little Caterpillar". It was a "pater-killer". Samuel picked up this habit somewhere along the way and he'd also add an /s/ to anything that began with a /th/. Oh, "sthank you". It was just that, a habit. When he was four it took little effort for it to be corrected.

Now Ale is four. You can tell he has a worldwind of information moving around in that little head of his. There are sounds that he cannot pronounce yet like the /s/ and there are others like the /l/ that he can but by the same habit that Samuel had with the /sth/ he will correct soon enough. One of the cutest things he does is when someone asks him how he is doing he replies "DOOK" which is "good". The logic is astounding. When I listen to myself and others speak from here many substitute a /d/ at the end of the work with a /k/ so that makes complete sense.

Of course, now we have two little monsters that say "dook" as Annah is all monkey-see-monkey-do. And now if we ask Annah what she is doing she says "I'm doinK". It makes me chuckle.

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