Funny words

Sasha finds шпатель (Russian for spatula) funny. I don't know why, but every time he pulls out the spatula out of his treasure basket and I name it, he giggles or at least smiles. He also tries to repeat the word. There must be something about how this word sounds that makes him giggle, I suppose.

He also really enjoys when I mimic cats, tigers, and lions. Cats purr and meow, and Sasha loves my meow sounds and tries to repeat. And tigers and lions roar, which in Russian is just a rolled R, and that makes Sasha very eager about rolling his Rs, although he has been unsuccessful in that, as of yet.

And, of course, Sasha himself says some stuff that make me giggle: bookabooka, takalaka, gheegaleega, and many more. I am pretty sure that bookabooka is just another way to say book, or it might be even a combination if English word and Russian grammar (Russian word for book - книга - ends with a which marks feminine gender of the word).

As for the other funny words, it's hard to say what he means. In one situation recently, he said a very long undecipherable sequence while looking at me, like he was trying to communicate something to me, and when I asked him: "What did you say?", he giggled and said yet another long sequence that did not sound anything like the first one. This might be just another form of mature babble, where he just uses a lot of syllables without naming a specific object. (Maybe he wanted me to play him cartoons on DVD. Who knows... Recently, he has been showing a lot of interest in that DVD player.)

But as we know, no verbal utterance is just utter. If a child communicates, he does it for reason.

A friend of mine shared with me recently that she knows a mother that does not really "trust" my friend's opinion on communicating with young children. Basically, my friend was asked what was the point of talking to a 10 month old, if they just babble senselessly. A recent study from Cornell University showed that the way mothers respond to babble utterances impacts how fast infants learn all sounds of their language. So,  definitely, talking to a small child - even if you don't understand the word he says - makes a difference in their language acquisition. Of course, you cannot strike a conversation with your infant about the scandalous WikiLeaks publications or tell him a hilarious joke by Jon Stewart, but it makes all the difference if you just narrate their daily life and their moves through their environment, so that some day he can tell you about a bookabooka by Malcolm Gladwell that he recently read.