As you may know, one of Arthur's favourite bath toys (and in fact, one of his first 100 words) is Cthulhu the octopus-like Great Old One:


Today for the first time, Arthur announced unprovoked that 'Cthulhu is an octopus' which is of course what any sane parents would have told him it was two years ago. Ah well, sanity was never one of my strong points ...

Also, he is under the impression that he can type his name into the front of his books where it says "This book belongs to __________________________" or whatever. Do you suppose he spends a bit of time on the computer?

Tags: arthur, language

Ah, my boy ... warped by the media already:

Arthur: "Those three words sound the same."
Julie: "Which three words?"
Arthur: "Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., and the other Nick Jr."

Tags: arthur, language

Arthur is starting to figure out the phonetic basis of writing. Of course he can read all the names of his favourite shows, words like 'Menu' and 'Go' that appear on his favourite web sites, and phrases like 'Bonus Features' from his growing DVD collection. But the other day at game, sorceror wrote 'HI ARTHUR' on the little magnetic writing board we have for him and asked him what H-I spelled, to which he sensibly replied: /hɪ/ (like 'hit' without the t). Then today he was reading the name of one of his favourite shows, Hi-5, and pronounced it /haj fajv/, and then hypercorrected to /hɪ fajv/.

I rue the day I ever taught him the word 'experiment'; he is now insistent on 'experimenting' with soap and water every night in the bath. How is a scientist such as myself supposed to react when his toddler, resisting the end of bathtime, wails "Nononono! More experimenting! More experimenting!"

Although maybe he'll be an architect. He was reading one of my copies of Archaeology magazine (which sit in the bathroom next to his potty-time books) with Julia the other day and she was showing him an article entitled 'How to build a pyramid'. Arthur asked what the words said, and when Julia told him, he replied sensibly, "You put the top on it."

Although space exploration is also popular. He's a big fan of Google Earth, which he calls 'the planet'. But recently he was frustrated with the program for some reason and cried out "I wanna go to a different planet!"

Tags: arthur
Current Mood: melancholy

Arthur is the coiner of three new words: slown (rhymes with frown), plamp, and pipple-whipple, all of which he finds incredibly amusing. All that is required now is for you, my dear readers, to supply the definitions for these exciting neologisms.

Tags: arthur, language

Arthur finally seems to be picking up at least a smattering of French. He said 'C'est bon' at least once recently, and knows at least the names of a few words and song titles (e.g. 'Alouette') that they sing at day care. Of course, he got very upset when I actually started singing the aforementioned song, shrieking, "You don't like it in Frenchie! You don't like it in Frenchie!" (He still says 'you don't like it' for 'I don't like it' although his command of the first person is significantly improved otherwise, and I presume that in Frenchie is what passes for a toddler loan-translation of en français). Had me howling in laughter, though.

I wonder who has done research on toddlers' use of simile and metaphor. This evening when I was giving him his bath, we were playing with a mostly-empty liquid soap bottle that I had refilled with soapy water. He was squirting it on himself and I said "You're making a soap waterfall"; shortly thereafter, in contrast, he remarked, "I'm making it like a soap waterfall."

Tags: arthur, language

Arthur, looking at a photo on the NY Times website: "It's a baseball picture, full of football players playing hockey."

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Arthur (counting the salad bowls he has just 'helpfully' brought to the supper table): One, two, three, four.
Me: Can you count them in French?
Arthur (pauses): Uno ... dos ... tres ... cuatro ... Just like Handy Manny!

So in conclusion, we have been sending Arthur to a French-only daycare for six months now, to no effect, but a few hours of watching a TV show (and its accompanying website) have taught him to count in Spanish.

In other news, his pre-literacy skills proceed apace. He now has pretty good whole word recognition for a wide variety of words and especially the names of his favourite web sites and shows, and words from his favourite stories, which he identifies even when out of context / not in their original font - e.g., on the satellite TV channel listing. He knows how to use Google well enough to type in the first letter of whatever site he wants and then pick the right one from the list that pops up, and then click the search button. I have no idea what else he can do ... should I be worried? :)

Tags: arthur, language

Wow, it has been over a month since I made a post with some language-related content here. I should really remedy that! Two things:

1) Yesterday I got my first mention in Language Log, largely because I had never bothered to email any of the linguists who blog there before.

2) Arthur has learned the word 'skedaddle'. curtana was mentioning this fact to our friend owldaughter the other day in range of Arthur's hearing, at which point he interjected, "I call it skedabble". He's right about that; this is actually how he pronounces it. But his statement shows evidence of metalinguistic thought: he is aware that his pronunciation is not the standard - he's not just mishearing it or not producing it correctly, but he actually has given thought to the difference between the way that we pronounce it and the way he does. Fascinating.

Tags: arthur, language

So, about fifteen minutes ago, we are reading Arthur's 'I Spy' book before bedtime, and he is paying special attention to some blocks that read 'B + C':

Arthur: B makes the buh, buh sound.
Dad: That's right! As I mentioned before, he's been doing this for the past week or so, and I have been encouraging him with questions, obviously?
Arthur: And C makes the suh, suh sound.
Dad: Right again! Hmm, that's interesting ... did I say that? I would have thought I'd say that it makes the kuh, kuh sound ...
Arthur: What sound the plus makes?
Dad: The plus doesn't make a sound.
Arthur: The plus makes the pluh, pluh sound. Uh ... wow.

A couple of pages later, we are looking at the Roman numeral VII.

Arthur: That says V ... twelve. It makes the sound vuh, twuh.

Wow.

Tags: arthur, language

Arthur's pre-literacy skills are developing very quickly! As I mentioned last time, he occasionally makes the shapes of letters using his hands. He also has memorized the appearance of various words and phrases, generally those that appear in a consistent font, like brand names (Walt Disney, Go Diego Go, etc.). He does, however, use his fingers to point at the three words in 'Bob the Builder' in quick succession as he is reading them. Because my boy, like his parents, is becoming a little computer addict, he also can read words like 'Play', 'Go', 'Yes', 'No', and 'Back', which appear in all sorts of different online games on Treehouse, Playhouse Disney, Noggin, Nick Jr., etc.

My favourite, though, has to be 'ARCHAEOLOGY' which he takes great pleasure in reading off my copies of Archaeology magazine which sit on the shelf in the bathroom, right next to Everyone Poops. He particularly likes the little subscription cards, which he insists that I pull out for his reading pleasure, so our place is now scattered with said cards for his reading pleasure, wherever he may roam. In addition to reading the word in its totality, he is getting faster and faster at spelling it out, which is really neat to see. He pronounces it something like 'ah-gi-AH-jee', though.

Arthur is also starting to pick up the associations between sounds and letters, partly due to us teaching him, and partly due to some of the online games he plays. When he reads letters he will now often say something like 'B says buh, buh' or 'D says duh, duh' although of course he doesn't know them all yet. Still, I can't imagine it will be too much longer before this, in combination with the whole-word recognition, will give us a proto-literate little lad.

I also realized that I hadn't remarked on another of his quirks, which is to describe all sorts of things using the sentence form 'X is your favourite Y' (he still only uses the first person rarely except in set phrases like 'I dunno'). The curious thing, for me, is that the earliest Y categories he used were all highly abstract (number, colour, shape); we still regularly hear 'Two is your favourite number' or 'Blue is your favourite colour' (the exact value of X changes from hour to hour). Only more recently, over the past few weeks, has the category become more concrete (friend, food, toy, show). But regardless, there's a whole lot of categorization going on around here.

One of the things that having a talkative and attentive kid makes you aware of is all of the stock phrases you use without even thinking about them. Case in point: 'Fair enough'. This is what we say, often, when Arthur says 'no' to any question we ask. But now he has started to add it in himself when we don't say it. "Do you want a cookie, Arthur?" "No. Fair enough."

And, of course, the vocabulary increases apace. Yesterday he learned the word 'scrumptious' from the TV. I suppose that means we will have to be even more vigilant when he is watching Youtube and starts clicking on things. Fortunately, he has learned the phrase 'That's not appropriate for little boys' which he says whenever he gets to something that isn't a kids' video.

Tags: arthur, language