Oden Adventures

I am fascinated by Vianne's language development because it reveals so much about the wackiness of the English language, and it parallels my French-learning process in so many ways (though I wish I'd done it at two and not twenty-five, it would've been much cuter and less humiliating).

Trying to wield this nonsensical language called English provides for much cuteness these days and I wanted to just note a few things before I forget them:

- When she's looking for something she can't find, she says, "I had it ago!" (I had it awhile ago.)

- When she's talking about something we haven't done or played with or watched in a long time, she says, "I haven't done/seen/etc. that a long day!"

- She said "theys" or "thems" instead of "their" for the possessive.

- For the plural, she likes to add another syllable "-ses" or "-es" to words, which is of course more logical that English's random rules for pluralization.  So, the plural of leaf is not leaves, but leafses.  And it's not mouths, it's mouth-es.

- The "mad guys" (bad guys) are now regularly incorporated into her play.

- She says "posta" for "supposed to" and gets a bit tripped up by the negative, "You're post...not...ta..."

- She likes to say, "You tricked me!" and to add "just in case" to the end of phrase (I realize now that I do this a lot) but she never uses either in a context in which they make sense.

- She's also been busting out, "It's not truth!" or "That's not truth!" or "That's not the truth and that's not the point!" this past week, rarely used in an appropriate context, which makes it very hard to keep a straight face.

- She has also been making up a lot of her own words lately, what I call speaking in tongues.  A lot of "loony lee la" and "noo nee foona" and "fawna leena" and similar sounds.

- She also likes to ask "What do we call that?" when she doesn't know a word for something.  I like her community-minded approach :-).