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Showing posts from July, 2017

¿Puedes hablar niñita?

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It is interesting hearing a child learn to speak and particularly interesting for me as I am learning a language (Spanish) myself. My granddaughter Julia has two languages to learn - Spanish from her mother and English from the rest of her current world. She also makes up words of her own to fill in the gaps, so the result is a blend of Spanglish toddler talk. It’s quite creative and often quite funny. Here are some of her words: Buo - is milk (hot or cold). I don’t know where this one came from. The Spanish for milk is ‘leche’ so there’s no obvious link there. Wei-wei - that’s her word for me, grandad. I think it came from ‘abuelo’ the Spanish word for grandad and I think she picked up on the ‘welo’ sound within the word. I rather like being Wei-wei Ma-ma, not to be confused with Mammy  - is what she calls Margaret. The ‘ma’ sound, probably comes from the ‘ma’ in grandma. Often Julia shouts it very loudly indeed. Wei-wei - Nina - is her word for grandma Nidia and (just