What did you say?

Ane is very gifted verbally. She has quite the vocabulary for a 4 year old. However, she is, well, 4 years old, and sometimes, words get lost in translation.

For example, a few months ago she wanted to watch “Takes a Man’s Hat.” The Webmaster and I were completely stumped.

“Do you mean the Man with the Yellow Hat?” I asked.

“Nooo, the Muppets, Mommy. Muppets Takes a Man’s Hat.”

After a few more back-and-forths, we finally figured it out – she wanted to watch the Muppets Take Manhattan.

This was only one of these transliteration moments for Ane. Most recent was last Sunday, when she asked Friend if she could play Hot Air Balloon.

Friend pointed to a Bob the Builder foil balloon that the kids had been playing with. “That balloon?” she asked Ane.

“No, Hot Air Balloon. The game with the pictures and the purple ball.”

A light dawned in Friend’s eyes. “Oh, Hullabaloo!”

“Yes!” Ane shouted. “Hot Air Balloon!” She had fun playing the game until we left.

Now, Tad is making an effort to talk more, and loves trying to sing along to certain songs that he finds funny or is very familiar with. And I’m starting to see this “word substitution” happen for him as well.

We were in the car, listening to Grover sing Over, Under, Around and Through (his classic bit where he faints at the end after doing the around, over, under, through, near and far over and over), when Tad started singing along. That is thrilling to me in and of itself, but then I started listening carefully.

The song goes “Around, around, around, around – over, and under, and through.”

Tad was singing, “Arwoun, arwoun, arwoun, arwoun – o’er, unner, achoo!”

It was adorable.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 10:17 am and is filed under Children.
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