Friday, July 24, 2009

Child-Speak, part 1

When Jeana was small, she had a little trouble with certain words, such as mayonnaise. She pronounced it "bandaids."
She also had a little trouble with the word moustache. Her daddy has had a moustache most of his adult life, and all of her life.

One day we were looking at old pictures; we had looked at pictures of her grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, talking about who they are, and how related. We came to one of her daddy, pre-moustache.

I said, who is that? She hesitated, then said firmly, Uncle Tommy (daddy's brother). I said, no, that's Daddy.

She looked at the picture, and at me, and then back at the picture, insisting that it was Uncle Tommy. When I held firm that it was indeed Daddy, she said, No! It not!

That not Daddy! He don't have no mattress on his lip!

It's a story we still tell, whenever one of the grandbabies has difficulty with a word.

Precious memories.

2 comments:

MotherT said...

I remember having to decipher my younger brother's words for people. Anytime a word started with sp, he reversed the letters so spaghetti was pasghetti, spell was pasell. Monkey was mokey, donkey was dokey. I was Tissy instead of Theresa. It created some very amusing conversations!

Fun memories!

Katie said...

Ah - I miss reading Jeana's blog - sorry she had to make it private - but understand how those things happen...