*el lenguaje

If I could get 5 Master's degrees, one would be in linguistics. It's a subject that completely fascinates me - I've been able to take a few classes both in San Diego and through the graduate program in Montana. It's really fascinating me to no end observing how Vera's language develops. Lately she'll try just about anything you tell her to say, and it's so funny the arrangement of sounds that come out of her mouth [my favorite is pretzel = zip-pa!]. I mean she has no [or little] idea how to take the sounds she hears and reproduce them in her mouth. Bilateral glides, labio-dental fricatives, voiced/unvoiced glottal stops? Interesting too is how she is already [this is kind of obvious] on her way to being an English speaker. There are sound combinations she can make that a Spanish speaker might have a hard time with - like STella [ever notice in Spanish it's always ESTella or ESPanish?] or shoES [the zzz sound].

It's a reminder that I should really speak to her in Spanish as much as possible to get those Spanish sounds wired in her little brain [like the other day we listened to my Latin club mix and practiced our "Movimientos Sexi" - um before I realized that's probably not appropriate...]

Anyway, right now she's in that classic baby phase of talking - like when you were little and would pretend to be a baby:

baba = bottle
mehmeh = milk/more/mama?
caca = cracker
doodoo = dirty
dohdoh = Dollie
papa = pumpkin/grandpa
ba [points to diaper] = I pooped
saaaaaaahhh/meemee = sam/amelia :)

She's got some other ones too that I wouldn't know how to spell phonetically. I keep trying to get a video but she doesn't cooperate. Here's a picture from when I was trying last night:

**Lots of what I write is so I remember things. I don't expect y'all to be interested in every little thing Vera says/does :)**