There’s a world of difference between Cormac’s I want it and his self-invented phrase, I’n’t want it but you sure struggle to tell the difference when you hear it. Until you get it wrong, that is.
(I’n’t want it = I not want it).
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Have you ever listened to how people normally say ‘I don’t know’? It often becomes something like ‘I nnknow’. The ‘don’t’ is reduced to little more than a held ‘n’.
Kids are amazing the way they manage to decode the stream of sound they hear around them and structure their own version of the system. And not the least amazing thing about mothers is that they all know, without consciously knowing it, how to speak to a baby, and how to support a new speaker to learn language.
In the beginning was the Word.
Once, I was babysitting for a neighbor at the tender age of 13. I took the tot for a walk in her stroller, and she kept pointing at rocks and saying “rock!” I kept praising her for correctly identifying geological features, saying, “Yes, rock, very good!” She got more and more insistent, so I began picking up the more interesting looking rocks and showing them to her, which she would take and then of course toss aside. This went on until our return home.
Much, much later, I realized she was saying “walk,” and just wanted to be let out of the stroller. It was then that I learned that children are just a titch like aliens from another planet.
Conversely, I’ve looked after kids who would spout a bunch of garbled sounds and thought amazedly “I have no idea how, but I actually understand that”.
If Cormac is anything like Libra, it might not even matter if you get it right (or wrong) – Libra likes to change his mind, so that peanut butter and banana sandwich I just made at his request? “Me no yike dis.”
Oh, parenthood.
I love these stories, you four.