T Language

Well, I shouldn't be shocked that 2 boys of 2 linguists living in a land of at least 2 foreign languages available to them at home on any given day would play with words. Last week James was reading one of my childhood favorites "There's a Monster Eating my House" and for whatever reason 'T Language' was born and it suddenly became "Tare's Tae Tonster Teating Ty Touse". He can say it quite fast. It's alarming.

He proceeded to read the entire book to his brother in 'T Language' (between chuckles) and a new trend began at our house. The boys have expanded this to include most every sound in English and have even tried asking in 'B Language' over dinner, "Ban bye bave buh blass bof bilk Bom?" Usually I try to humor them and reply, "Bes bif bou bay bleese!"

But this is getting kind of 'old' after 2 weeks of straight alliteration. Enough already! Tan't twe tearn ta teal tanguage? Spending our energies on Swahili seems much more practical to me, but no one asked me!

And childhood passes all too quickly anyway.

I now understand firsthand how creoles are made. [For those of you not familiar with creoles: When two separate language communities are thrown together it is the first generation of children raised in that environment who typically 'create' a creole with regular grammar rules, etc. - I always thought it was interesting that it took a generation of children to sort it out.]