Wordstock

One week ago, clear as a bell, came V's first complete sentence in Swedish. Her sister had just shown up, as well as our dog, Cava, and so naturally V was very excited. The trouble is that Cava is somewhat advanced in years and usually hides from V. V was wandering around the apartment, repeating, "Cava, Cava." Finally, she came to Nova and me and asked, "Var är Cava?" It was so clearly enunciated that we could barely believe our ears. Too bad her dad wasn't there to hear it!

I have mentioned many times that she is very good at mimicking. Lately, I have noticed that she has picked up certain key features of the English intonation system, which, believe me, differs greatly from that of Finnish and Swedish. For example, in English we tend to use a rising intonation when we ask a question--otherwise it sounds like a statement. If you don't use the rising intonation, people might be confused as to whether or not you are asking a question, so in other words the rising intonation actually carries meaning. These days, a lot of people in the United States also use this rising intonation feature when they make statements, which, you might guess, makes them sound like they are always asking questions. I am sure you have noticed this--I know I have, especially since I moved away from the States. It's interesting that this so-called "uptalk" seems to be a feature of white speech only, from what I understand.

Anyway, about the question intonation. V already has this feature mastered, which points toward its great importance in effective communication in English. Other languages, such as Finnish, don't make use of intonation for meaning, which might be hard to imagine if you are really used to English. Finnish has other stuff, mostly suffixes, that indicate whether, for example, something is a question or a statement.

Here is another example about intonation. You know how moms talk incessant nonsense to their babies, right? Today I was doing that when I was dressing her to leave. I asked her, "Are we going to go see your babysitter?"

V looked up at me and issued a pitch perfect, "Mmmm-hmmm!" What was so funny about it was that it sounded exactly like people in the Southern United States. Picture someone from the Plantation South, for example, talking about if they like pecan pie. "Do I like pecan pie? Mmmm-hmmm!" And that's what V did--like a perfect little Southerner.


Here are a few words that are new on the lexical front: avocado, sockies, milk, pretty.

Just for fun, I thought I would try to list out all of her current wordstock. I'll stick to just the English words for now, because I would have to think too hard to come up with the Swedish and Finnish words (!).

These are the things that she can answer "What does the X say?": cat, cow, horse, duck, clock, chicken, dog, pig (the horse sound is REALLY cute!)

These are words that she uses at will, in no particular order: star, dog, cat, duck, bear, brush, diaper, shoes, bath, ball, no, socks, hat, baby, cheese, banana, avocado, milk, bottle, clock, cookie, bread, book, lamp, toes, nose, mouth, eyes, more, uh-oh, shhhhhh (does that count?), kiss . There are also some dozen or so proper names that she knows, names for friends and family.

It shouldn't be surprising that her comprehension is far greater than her production. Any of us who try to speak a foreign language know about this linguistic truism. For example, she understands the words finger, nice, sleeping, but she doesn't say any of them--yet.