Monday, September 28, 2009

From the mouths...

So, I have a thing for linguistics, and love to listen to how people speak, both the words they use, and the way they pronounce those words. I've had a lot of fun as an easterner out here in UT as well, although when I was teaching in Middle School back home, my students asked me where I was from because they said I had a funny accent :) But, I had also just gotten home from my mission in France and Switzerland... Anyway, it's also a lot of fun listening to Parker figuring out English (and French.) I got really excited when he told me that something "falled" off the stairs. Although standard English would prescribe "fell" instead of "falled," his use suggests that he inherently understands that "ed" at the end of the word denotes past tense--thus, he was speaking from his own understanding of grammar instead of merely repeating a phrase he'd heard Mommy say. Fantastic.

The point of this entry though, is to mention Parker's newest linguistic quirk. He's started adding a dipthong to words with the "ow" sound. Ex: he now says "die-own" instead of "down," "i-out" instead of "out," and "ki-ouch" instead of "couch." It's hilarious, although it makes him a bit harder to understand. He used to say those words perfectly, and Ihave no idea where this new tendency towards dipthongization came from!

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