Yakkity Yak

Ellie is really starting to talk now in a big way. And it’s so fun for me to watch her learning, and see how incredibly fast she is learning, especially from the perspective of being a language student myself.

She started crazy babbling about a month ago. It went a little like this: “Bleckity, glickle, glinkle, nkle.” She would go along playing, talking to herself like this. Or sometimes she would include me in the conversation too.

Ellie also developed quite the repertoire of animal sounds over the past month or two, including the sound made by a dog, cow, fish, lion, tiger, bear, elephant, and gorilla. I’ve been trying to get her to work on horses and chickens but she doesn’t seem interested, she’s just a jungle animal kind of girl.

And then suddenly Ellie is saying actual words. She loves saying, “Hi!” And my favorite is when she suddenly says “Hi!” to someone we pass on the street and that person lights up with surprise. What Ellie really really loves is saying, “bye bye.” She says “bye bye” to Jason or I when one of us leaves, if we are leaving a place to go home she says “bye bye” fifteen times to everyone, she says “bye bye” to the food she drops off her highchair, and tonight after our bath she said “bye bye” to the bath tub, her bath toys, the potty, and the spot on the potty before leaving the bathroom.

And this brings me to what is Ellie’s current favorite word: “Spot”, although when she says “spot” it sounds more like “pah!” Ellie finds spots everywhere, and shows them to me. She finds them in the pattern on our floor, a piece of dirt on the floor is also a “spot”, the little “spot” or mole she has on her arm is of great concern to her, food that gets dropped on her clothes or highchair tray are “spots”, any roundish mark, pattern, or raised part on anything is a “spot”. I never knew how many spots there are in this world.

Another key feature of Ellie’s verbalization is the letter “B”, more specifically the sounds “bah” or “boo” (as in book). I think Ellie has decided to go with the rule, ‘When in doubt, just say “bah”‘. “Bah” can mean ball, umbrella, bag, flower, bug spray, pillow, you name it–it’s the sound for every occasion, and the one I am usually guessing about.

When Ellie isn’t saying “spot” or “bah” she goes around pointing at things and says “da!” meaning “that”. What she wants is for me to tell her the names of things, and what always amazes me is how she can remember what things are called after being told only once. I wish I could do that with Chinese.

Speaking of Chinese, I don’t think Ellie is speaking any yet, but then again I might not be tuned in enough to pick up garbled Chinese like I can with English. She can understand some simple Chinese phrases that she hears often, like “Let me hold you!” (I know she understands because whenever someone says this she clings tighter to me.)

Other words in Ellie’s vocabulary include Da-da and Ma-ma (but I hear 50 Da-da’s to every 1 Ma-ma), “cheese” is “chz”, “drink” is “dee”. Ellie’s “help” is a combination of speaking and sign language, she says “poi” while  putting her palms together, her variation on the sign. The other signs she uses are “eat”, “milk”, “please” and “diaper”.

I still hear the occasional “bleckity, glickle, glinkle, nkle,” and it makes me smile every time.