I forgot to mention previously that V has a lot of adjectives--at least in English, possibly in her other languages: big, little, hot, cold, soft, hard, etc. She also seems to have a couple of adverbials: over there, up there, down there, etc.
Today she surprised me by counting out loud in Finnish. No kidding. She was looking at a page from a book, and all of the sudden she said, "Seitsemän (seven)." Then she said, "Seven." OK, I really don't think she knows that seitsemän and seven mean the same thing in different languages; it's probably just a coincidence that she said both things back-to-back. (Really, I may be a proud mamma, but I'm not delusional.) She then started from the beginning: "Yksi, kaksi, kolme ..." Then her pappa came in, and she said, "Sex!" Now, in case you might think that this is a really weird thing for her to say to her father, keep in mind that sex means 'six' in Swedish. It also means the same thing that sex means in English, so rest assured there are plenty of puns in Swedish about the number 6.
Showing posts with label numbers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label numbers. Show all posts
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
19-month verbs, plurals, and other stuff
Lately I have been noticing a lot of verbs in English. These include push, close it, open, sleeping, going, drop it, want that, throw it, kiss, cuddle, eat it, help (you), kick ... maybe that's about it. Oh, she has also repeated "Love you" a few times, which of course breaks my heart!
I included the pronouns with the verbs, because V doesn't distinguish word boundaries at this point--which makes sense. So, for example, like I have noted before, she calls out "Help you!" when what she really means is "Help me!" or even just "Help!"
I realized that I have been carrying on a lot about her lack of deictic expressions, but I have been over generalizing. She has been using demonstrative pronouns such as that and this for nearly as long as I can remember -- pretty much as long as she has had her first words. It's the personal pronouns that come later: I, you, she, etc.
There are a lot of two-word utterances these days, especially noun phrases. She uses her own name a lot to indicate that she wants something or to tell us that something is hers; for example, "V's fingers." "V's milk." There have also been some quasi sentences, such as "Cava eating."
She continues to be very interested in colors, as well as in numbers. She keeps trying to talk about colors, and she is getting pretty good at identifying them! She knows the names of the colors, at least, and she seems to be able to recognize blue and green.
About a week ago, she counted to three for the first time. I make it a habit to ask her how many toes and fingers she has, mostly as something to distract her when I am putting on her pajamas or whatnot. The other day when I asked her how many toes she had, she said, "One, two, three ...!" Her father heard it, and he is the numbers person in our family, so he was quite excited about that.
Someone the other day commented that V knows a lot of proper names for people. I hadn't thought of that before, but I suppose it's true. She talks about people she knows, she recognizes people in photos, and she really likes to call and "talk" to her friends on her play phone that her godparents gave her. Every time I hang up my phone she calls out, "Bye bye Tina Tina!" -- which is actually a bit embarrassing (I don't think I talk to Tina that much!). Lately, she has been obsessed with these tiny Pippi Longstocking, Tommi, and Annika dolls that she wants to carry around with her all the time. She talks about them constantly, even showing them to people we see outside on the street.
Some of these words are quite clear; others not so much. The other night, for example, when we had Finnish speaking friends over, they heard her saying Finnish words when I, at the same time, was certain she was speaking English! So, her pronunciation is less that clear much of the time. Some words, such as "Annika" or "window" come out clear as a bell. Certain sounds, though, seem to give her trouble. For example, she routinely leaves off the sounds [n], [s], and the palatal fricative (the sh sound in English) at the beginning of words. The word cereal, for example, comes out sounding like "hereal." There are exceptions, however; for example, she can say the word socks and cheeks without difficulty.
In her current pronunciation, the words shoes, juice (and, I suppose, Jews, if she knew that word) all sound the same. Sometimes I don't know if she wants juice or if she is showing me her shoes.
She also pronounces the words pear, Pierre, and bear identically.
Another interesting point is that she seems to add articles (a/an, the)already to her English words. So in other words, she says, "A cow." "A bottle." "A ball." I find this really compelling. The idiomatic use of articles in English is one of the hardest things for nonnative speakers to acquire. Finns, for example, tend to have a really hard time with articles in English because Finnish has no articles. My students (and others) complain that this is the one part of English grammar that they find the most difficult--and I can see why! There are few hard and fast rules to describe when or when not to use articles; usually native speakers just know when it "sounds right," which is not especially useful advice for people who are trying to learn English. Articles are one of many linguistic features that are innate to a native speaker of a language, and this is why I find it fascinating that V seems to already be acquiring the patterns in English.
Unfortunately, it is hard for me to comment on her other languages in much detail, because, of course, she doesn't speak any languages other than English to me. However, I do notice a few things when I hear her speaking to her dad or her babysitter. So, on the subject of innate ability in a native language, I can comment on her pronunciation of Finnish and her use of certain forms in Swedish.
Finnish makes use of so-called "double" letters (ie, geminate consonants and long vowels) that we don't use the same way in English. In a word like kukka 'flower', for example, both of the "k" sounds in the middle are pronounced; the "k" sound in the middle is held longer in the mouth than the "k" sound that comes at the beginning of the word. V can already produce these geminate sounds perfectly. In contrast, I, a nonnative speaker of Finnish, still struggle not only to correctly pronounce geminates and long vowels in Finnish, but to even hear them. And I have been speaking Finnish a lot longer than she has! Being brought up from infancy with a language makes all the difference.
In Swedish, nouns are divided into what they call either "neuter" or "non-neuter." The class of the noun tells you what kind of article to use with it, either en or ett, and also how to make it plural. Again, this is one of those properties of Swedish that somebody like me could struggle for the rest of my life to try and keep straight. I don't think V can use these forms productively yet (that is, at this point she pretty much repeats what her dad says), but there have been some instances of her correctly saying, for example, "Hundar" for 'dogs' or "Ballen" for 'the ball.' Needless to say, her dad loves it when this happens.
I included the pronouns with the verbs, because V doesn't distinguish word boundaries at this point--which makes sense. So, for example, like I have noted before, she calls out "Help you!" when what she really means is "Help me!" or even just "Help!"
I realized that I have been carrying on a lot about her lack of deictic expressions, but I have been over generalizing. She has been using demonstrative pronouns such as that and this for nearly as long as I can remember -- pretty much as long as she has had her first words. It's the personal pronouns that come later: I, you, she, etc.
There are a lot of two-word utterances these days, especially noun phrases. She uses her own name a lot to indicate that she wants something or to tell us that something is hers; for example, "V's fingers." "V's milk." There have also been some quasi sentences, such as "Cava eating."
She continues to be very interested in colors, as well as in numbers. She keeps trying to talk about colors, and she is getting pretty good at identifying them! She knows the names of the colors, at least, and she seems to be able to recognize blue and green.
About a week ago, she counted to three for the first time. I make it a habit to ask her how many toes and fingers she has, mostly as something to distract her when I am putting on her pajamas or whatnot. The other day when I asked her how many toes she had, she said, "One, two, three ...!" Her father heard it, and he is the numbers person in our family, so he was quite excited about that.
Someone the other day commented that V knows a lot of proper names for people. I hadn't thought of that before, but I suppose it's true. She talks about people she knows, she recognizes people in photos, and she really likes to call and "talk" to her friends on her play phone that her godparents gave her. Every time I hang up my phone she calls out, "Bye bye Tina Tina!" -- which is actually a bit embarrassing (I don't think I talk to Tina that much!). Lately, she has been obsessed with these tiny Pippi Longstocking, Tommi, and Annika dolls that she wants to carry around with her all the time. She talks about them constantly, even showing them to people we see outside on the street.
Some of these words are quite clear; others not so much. The other night, for example, when we had Finnish speaking friends over, they heard her saying Finnish words when I, at the same time, was certain she was speaking English! So, her pronunciation is less that clear much of the time. Some words, such as "Annika" or "window" come out clear as a bell. Certain sounds, though, seem to give her trouble. For example, she routinely leaves off the sounds [n], [s], and the palatal fricative (the sh sound in English) at the beginning of words. The word cereal, for example, comes out sounding like "hereal." There are exceptions, however; for example, she can say the word socks and cheeks without difficulty.
In her current pronunciation, the words shoes, juice (and, I suppose, Jews, if she knew that word) all sound the same. Sometimes I don't know if she wants juice or if she is showing me her shoes.
She also pronounces the words pear, Pierre, and bear identically.
Another interesting point is that she seems to add articles (a/an, the)already to her English words. So in other words, she says, "A cow." "A bottle." "A ball." I find this really compelling. The idiomatic use of articles in English is one of the hardest things for nonnative speakers to acquire. Finns, for example, tend to have a really hard time with articles in English because Finnish has no articles. My students (and others) complain that this is the one part of English grammar that they find the most difficult--and I can see why! There are few hard and fast rules to describe when or when not to use articles; usually native speakers just know when it "sounds right," which is not especially useful advice for people who are trying to learn English. Articles are one of many linguistic features that are innate to a native speaker of a language, and this is why I find it fascinating that V seems to already be acquiring the patterns in English.
Unfortunately, it is hard for me to comment on her other languages in much detail, because, of course, she doesn't speak any languages other than English to me. However, I do notice a few things when I hear her speaking to her dad or her babysitter. So, on the subject of innate ability in a native language, I can comment on her pronunciation of Finnish and her use of certain forms in Swedish.
Finnish makes use of so-called "double" letters (ie, geminate consonants and long vowels) that we don't use the same way in English. In a word like kukka 'flower', for example, both of the "k" sounds in the middle are pronounced; the "k" sound in the middle is held longer in the mouth than the "k" sound that comes at the beginning of the word. V can already produce these geminate sounds perfectly. In contrast, I, a nonnative speaker of Finnish, still struggle not only to correctly pronounce geminates and long vowels in Finnish, but to even hear them. And I have been speaking Finnish a lot longer than she has! Being brought up from infancy with a language makes all the difference.
In Swedish, nouns are divided into what they call either "neuter" or "non-neuter." The class of the noun tells you what kind of article to use with it, either en or ett, and also how to make it plural. Again, this is one of those properties of Swedish that somebody like me could struggle for the rest of my life to try and keep straight. I don't think V can use these forms productively yet (that is, at this point she pretty much repeats what her dad says), but there have been some instances of her correctly saying, for example, "Hundar" for 'dogs' or "Ballen" for 'the ball.' Needless to say, her dad loves it when this happens.
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