Still taking the memory bus back to the land of previous posts ...

Language acquisition is one of the things toddlerhood is all about. Too often, parents find out just how much their kid has picked up when a "bad" word slips or a family secret pops out in the wrong company. Oooops.

How kids assimilate vocabulary depends on many factors, but being talked TO is probably the biggest advantage they can have.

In my world, talking happens a lot. But it's not all necessarily decipherable:

Sam has a good ear. He picks up subtle differences in tone, learns tunes, does about a zillion different animals sounds and can tell exactly who's on the other end of the phone after just a word or two. He knows that some of the cartoons he sees are in French and a lot of the people around us speak Creole.

He understands quite a bit of Creole, but communicates mainly in English. He's manufactured a few words of his own, building them from bits of other languages and incorporating them into our family-speak. For example, he's taken the French/Creole word 'sorti' and combined it with the English word 'move', so if someone's standing in front of the TV when he's trying to watch an episode of Dogtanian he asks them to moochi. We know what he means, and even find ourselves using it outside the house from time to time.

Everyone on this island has an accent: mine is American; Sam's Granddad's, as well as all the aunts, uncles and cousins, is Creole; Dad's is an undefinable English that Brits can't pin down; Johanna's is Swiss; Roland's is German; Marketa's is Czech; Aka's is Hindi; Russell's is Scottish.

And Gay's is Posh. This is the one that confuses my three-year old. Actually, it used to confuse him. Now it cracks him up.

When Gay talks about our up-coming trip to Kenya, she mentions girawwwffs and zebbras. She looks for her misplaced glawsses and talks of Cj taking a bawth.

Taking the mickey out of Gay's way of speaking is now one of my son's favorite pastimes. When he asks if Gay would like to have a glawws of wautah his whole face gets into the act, and he laughs his head off when he sets her up by asking, "What animal has a long neck?"

She's a good sport, though, and often takes him on nature hikes ... 'adventures', both call them ... and only laughs along when he wants to know which pawth he's to follow.

We do wonder what sort of accent he'll have when he's exposed to the lingual smorgasbord on offer at the International School. Maybe some day I'll hear him say, "Mom, you talk funny!"

Or will he say, Mummy, you speak rawthah oddly?