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Amanda-ese

Eleanor learns Spanish in school (a teeny tiny bit) and I think Amanda feels a bit left out. So she has been making up her own language. She calls it Spanish, although it is not related... often she'll say some nonsense syllables and then say, "That means I don't want any more chicken, in Spanish!" Sometimes she'll just say the nonsense and look at me as though I should understand, especially in the past few days when she's been listening to the Hispanic house painters.

The only word that has any reliable meaning is Odé. It means "look at this!" or "here it is!" or something like that. If she asks it as a question, it means "is this right?" For example "Odé seloma" meant "Are these the right sleeves?" yesterday. I used it the other day and she looked up in surprise. "That's my word!" She was pretty pleased with herself.

This does occasionally lead to ridiculousness, as it did a week or so ago when Amanda kept insisting that she didn't know how to speak English. "I don't! speak! English! I only! Know! Spanish!" she said, emphasizing each word. It is usually better not to argue with the 3 year old in cases like this, so I eventually gave in. "So how do you say 'Milk' in Spanish?" I think I need to get the girl some language classes or something.

Update: I forgot the funniest part of Amanda's language learning. Somewhere she has picked up a southern accent. This is not expected, since where we live in North Carolina has almost no native southerners. She can say "Yaas, ah keen" with the best of the southern belles. She's quite the mimic.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Amanda telling you she doesn't speak English (in English) reminds me of Anders insisting that he can't hear me. I ask, well, can you hear this? And he pauses and answers "no, I can't hear that either!"

FNDP

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