Making a list of words Vidar says at the moment. (spontaneous utterances, not mere imitations). If I put them in categories I am likely to remember more.
Food:
døt --(grøt/porridge)
bot --(bread)
møt - (milk)
oost - (ost/cheese)
rees -(rice)
passa- (pasta)
matayoni - (macaroni)
tawnfates - (cornflakes)
mat (food)
yodurt - yoghurt
apa -apple
banan -banana
avotado -avocado
mando -mango
mooroot -(morot/carrot)
bottoyi -- (broccoli)
tawta --(torte/cake)
ees --(is/icecream)
vatten --(water) he says this very clearly
saft -(saft/juice) also very clear
tee - (tea)
apaseen -(orange)
meyoon --(melon)
hayon --(hallon/raspberries)
jordubba -(jordgubbe/strawberry)
bawbær -(blueberry)
veenbær -(redcurrants)
lingonsoot -(lingonsylt)
samp --(svamp/mushroom)
Actions/Verb Phrases that take Subjects:
(the ai ending is the present tense ending -Vr, where he pronounces all rs as glides)
yamlai --(fall)
pinnai --(run)
hoppai ---(jump)
yoya -- (roll)
aata bus/bil/rushtana (go by bus, car, slide)
yom say -- (hide)
eta X --- (eat X)
sova -- (sleep)
boshta tendene (brush teeth)
butta baya --- (change nappy)
bada --(bathe)
ta X -- take X
shøya -- (drive)
lese den -- (read it)
kan det -- (can do it)
titta -- (look/watch)
dansa -- (dance)
Friday, 5 October 2012
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Gradually, Vidai is replacing Vivai as his name for himself.
He is still obsessed with the CD of songs from Astrid Lingren books. Paiyets (Pirates) is the one he asks for most. He dances sometimes but now he also sometimes stands stock still and listens for the words. Is very thrilled when he hears something he understands, and so he repeats it.
Bjorn has been investing some time in getting him to like the Beatles, the White Album in particular. Obladi Obladi was easy because I used to sing that to him when he was very little. But he also likes Bungalow Bill because of the jungle and the tiger, and the fact that he took his mamma. Blackbird is also a hit. When Honey Pie comes on after Obladi Oblada he yells `inte den. into den'. Kind of understandable.
Big planks of wood are being deployed to create bridges and slides, and the wooden stool is used to climb up on things and jump off from. The house turns into a little obstacle course, which he practises on over and over again, with variations. Most of the variations he makes up himself. Like using a box lid or computer case as a sled.
phrases:
yette yongt (very long)
upp i luffen (up in the air)
yunt yunt (round and round)
yette dott (very good (for food))
yett baa (very good)
yesa den (read that)
Last two nights he has had very disturbed sleep. Waking up every hour or so, sometimes disoriented and inconsolable. I don't know what's up. I hope its just over stimulation and that the fact that everything is developing very fast at the moment.
He is still obsessed with the CD of songs from Astrid Lingren books. Paiyets (Pirates) is the one he asks for most. He dances sometimes but now he also sometimes stands stock still and listens for the words. Is very thrilled when he hears something he understands, and so he repeats it.
Bjorn has been investing some time in getting him to like the Beatles, the White Album in particular. Obladi Obladi was easy because I used to sing that to him when he was very little. But he also likes Bungalow Bill because of the jungle and the tiger, and the fact that he took his mamma. Blackbird is also a hit. When Honey Pie comes on after Obladi Oblada he yells `inte den. into den'. Kind of understandable.
Big planks of wood are being deployed to create bridges and slides, and the wooden stool is used to climb up on things and jump off from. The house turns into a little obstacle course, which he practises on over and over again, with variations. Most of the variations he makes up himself. Like using a box lid or computer case as a sled.
phrases:
yette yongt (very long)
upp i luffen (up in the air)
yunt yunt (round and round)
yette dott (very good (for food))
yett baa (very good)
yesa den (read that)
Last two nights he has had very disturbed sleep. Waking up every hour or so, sometimes disoriented and inconsolable. I don't know what's up. I hope its just over stimulation and that the fact that everything is developing very fast at the moment.
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
He is definitely at the two-word stage. He is producing Verb-Object, Subject-Verb, Adjective-Noun, Possessive-Noun, Quantifier-Noun, Modifier-Adjective , but not yet stringing those together into larger sentences. The complete sentences I have heard so far are things like `Mamma ta den' (Mama take that), and De e Viva's (That is Vidar's). He has a particle construction Eter upp den.
Negation is interesting. He seems to have both inte and jo as discourse particles for negation and affirmation respectively. They do not come in a particular order, but can be attached either before or after his (usually 2) word sequence. So they do not seem to be very syntactically integrated yet. The other day he used inte to negate an utterance, and then repeated the whole thing using not instead, so he knows those two are equivalent.
When it comes to English and Swedish, he translates freely between them but speaks mostly in Swedish. He seems to think they are the same thing at some logical level. As a party trick, it is possible to ask him literally ``Can you say strawberry?'' Or ``Can you say car?'' and he will respond with jordgubbe and bil respectively.
He understands the letters of the alphabet and will recognize and name A, B, C, P, M, V at least. He will also volunteer words that begin with these letters. Whether this is phonological understanding or just rote learning I do not know. He often goes out of his way to ask for the ABC book, or the ABC puzzle.
I have mentioned already that he has no distinction between l/r/y and they all come out as /y/. He seems to have generalized this. He has now noticed the existence of /r/ at the ends of many words like Vidar, and all the Swedish plurals. He has started pronouncing these words with an endglide, so that Vidar comes out as vivai. Here and there (hær and dær) have been hai and dai for a long time though.
Vidar can count to ten more or less (in Swedish) which is just by rote, but he definitely actually understands two and also three. You can ask him how many X's there are, and if it is two or three he will count, and give the right answer. With `two' he doesn't even need to count.
Here are some more common phrases, before I forget:
aya dom (all of them)
baade toe (both of them)
kan de (can (do) that)
min (mine, used predicatively more than attributively. De e min )
inteting (ingenting, nothing)
Some cute things: When he jumps down off of something he often says Humpty Dumpty as a joke (He decided that one himself; all I ever did was read him the nursery rhyme). He likes the Cat in the Hat books, and even the Cat in the Hat Comes Back. He keeps bringing it up, and spontaneously mentioning Thing1 and Thing2, and Voom.
Right now he is into the CD we have of Astrid Lindgren. He says `dansa Pippi' when he wants to hear that CD, and then there are 4 or 5 songs he likes to listen to and dance to including the Pippi song, Emil song, the Pirate song and some song about a cat. These songs really can't be listened to that many times, so Bjorn is going a little crazy.
Negation is interesting. He seems to have both inte and jo as discourse particles for negation and affirmation respectively. They do not come in a particular order, but can be attached either before or after his (usually 2) word sequence. So they do not seem to be very syntactically integrated yet. The other day he used inte to negate an utterance, and then repeated the whole thing using not instead, so he knows those two are equivalent.
When it comes to English and Swedish, he translates freely between them but speaks mostly in Swedish. He seems to think they are the same thing at some logical level. As a party trick, it is possible to ask him literally ``Can you say strawberry?'' Or ``Can you say car?'' and he will respond with jordgubbe and bil respectively.
He understands the letters of the alphabet and will recognize and name A, B, C, P, M, V at least. He will also volunteer words that begin with these letters. Whether this is phonological understanding or just rote learning I do not know. He often goes out of his way to ask for the ABC book, or the ABC puzzle.
I have mentioned already that he has no distinction between l/r/y and they all come out as /y/. He seems to have generalized this. He has now noticed the existence of /r/ at the ends of many words like Vidar, and all the Swedish plurals. He has started pronouncing these words with an endglide, so that Vidar comes out as vivai. Here and there (hær and dær) have been hai and dai for a long time though.
Vidar can count to ten more or less (in Swedish) which is just by rote, but he definitely actually understands two and also three. You can ask him how many X's there are, and if it is two or three he will count, and give the right answer. With `two' he doesn't even need to count.
Here are some more common phrases, before I forget:
aya dom (all of them)
baade toe (both of them)
kan de (can (do) that)
min (mine, used predicatively more than attributively. De e min )
inteting (ingenting, nothing)
Some cute things: When he jumps down off of something he often says Humpty Dumpty as a joke (He decided that one himself; all I ever did was read him the nursery rhyme). He likes the Cat in the Hat books, and even the Cat in the Hat Comes Back. He keeps bringing it up, and spontaneously mentioning Thing1 and Thing2, and Voom.
Right now he is into the CD we have of Astrid Lindgren. He says `dansa Pippi' when he wants to hear that CD, and then there are 4 or 5 songs he likes to listen to and dance to including the Pippi song, Emil song, the Pirate song and some song about a cat. These songs really can't be listened to that many times, so Bjorn is going a little crazy.
Monday, 24 September 2012
There's lots more English now in what Vidar is saying. He seems to add something new every day. We have started to record him now, but I am taking notes because his phonology is still hard to understand and I am afraid I may forget things and not be able to understand the recordings later.
He has a modal, `must' pronounced the Swedish way, but so far he is just combining it with one other word, and he seems to use it for wanting things rather than needing them
mossa upp/down
yette ont --- when something hurts
bort med den --- take that away
bort med pappa/mamma --- when he wants to be left alone to do something
When he says something he often repeats it many times, sometimes with different stress and intonations. This is true even when he imitates. He is doing a lot of imitation. I can't figure out how he chooses the subset of my utterance to repeat, but its usually a two or three word stretch that was particularly salient. It is unclear how much of what he repeats is perfectly understood.
he likes telling you when things are opposites. If you say he needs to put his shoes on, he will often say something like ``soos on, inte off''. with the Swedish negation. He also has on and off for lights, and up and down. He is confused about in and out though. He tends to use `in' for any kind of transition from one space into another, even if its for going outside. He also thinks that `hemma', the Swedish word for `home' means `garden', so I don't know if those confusions are influencing each other.
All in all, he seems to keep up a running commentary on what is going on. He names things and says whether they are big or small and what colour they are. He repeats what you say. He offers remembered associations to things you talk about. I am always explaining to him what we are doing and why and he comments by repeating the bits he understands, reinforcing in different orders, and negating the opposites. It feels like he's always looking for an excuse to start a conversation, or trying to think of relevant things to say. He will repeat things from books I have read him, if he thinks its relevant, or something I say reminds him of it.
But actually I have also caught him talking to himself while playing, but I couldn't make out what he was saying.
He also sometimes talks nonsense, at least I think it is nonsense, and pretends to have long nonsense monologues. I think these are genuine nonsense word play because when he really tries to say something it is a two or three word chunk. These are long sentences strung together, but they are just made up syllables.
So far there doesn't seem to be much sign that he is choosing which language to speak depending on the interlocutor. There is a lot of apparently indiscriminate language mixing.
Yesterday he was trying to say something but neither Bjorn nor I could figure out what it was. We both tried a couple of things, but he shook his head. I asked him whether the word was Swedish or English, and that didn't faze him, he answered `English'. Since we never figured out what the word was, I do not know whether that was true or not.
He has a modal, `must' pronounced the Swedish way, but so far he is just combining it with one other word, and he seems to use it for wanting things rather than needing them
mossa upp/down
yette ont --- when something hurts
bort med den --- take that away
bort med pappa/mamma --- when he wants to be left alone to do something
When he says something he often repeats it many times, sometimes with different stress and intonations. This is true even when he imitates. He is doing a lot of imitation. I can't figure out how he chooses the subset of my utterance to repeat, but its usually a two or three word stretch that was particularly salient. It is unclear how much of what he repeats is perfectly understood.
he likes telling you when things are opposites. If you say he needs to put his shoes on, he will often say something like ``soos on, inte off''. with the Swedish negation. He also has on and off for lights, and up and down. He is confused about in and out though. He tends to use `in' for any kind of transition from one space into another, even if its for going outside. He also thinks that `hemma', the Swedish word for `home' means `garden', so I don't know if those confusions are influencing each other.
All in all, he seems to keep up a running commentary on what is going on. He names things and says whether they are big or small and what colour they are. He repeats what you say. He offers remembered associations to things you talk about. I am always explaining to him what we are doing and why and he comments by repeating the bits he understands, reinforcing in different orders, and negating the opposites. It feels like he's always looking for an excuse to start a conversation, or trying to think of relevant things to say. He will repeat things from books I have read him, if he thinks its relevant, or something I say reminds him of it.
But actually I have also caught him talking to himself while playing, but I couldn't make out what he was saying.
He also sometimes talks nonsense, at least I think it is nonsense, and pretends to have long nonsense monologues. I think these are genuine nonsense word play because when he really tries to say something it is a two or three word chunk. These are long sentences strung together, but they are just made up syllables.
So far there doesn't seem to be much sign that he is choosing which language to speak depending on the interlocutor. There is a lot of apparently indiscriminate language mixing.
Yesterday he was trying to say something but neither Bjorn nor I could figure out what it was. We both tried a couple of things, but he shook his head. I asked him whether the word was Swedish or English, and that didn't faze him, he answered `English'. Since we never figured out what the word was, I do not know whether that was true or not.
Saturday, 8 September 2012
At 2 years 3.5 months Vidar is talking a lot and has many many words probably too many for me to write down here. His sentences seem mostly to be in Swedish, with some English words thrown in. His pronunciation is still limited in certain ways: k comes out as t and g comes out as d in all positions; l, r, y are all pronounced as y; no consonant clusters in evidence.
Lots of deictics, which he has had from the very beginning, although they have changed a little over the past year. His favourite ones are currently `dai' and `den', meaning `that location' and `that thing' respectively. His name for himself is Viva.
Here are his most common phrases:
Eter mat
(inte) bytte bleier
Eter upp den
Off den --- take that off
bort den--- take that away
inte Mamma/Pappa, bare Viva--- not Mamma, just Vidar
on, inte off
massa X --- lots of X
sover
sitter fast--- when something is stuck, or can't be moved by him.
sitter vagn--- sit in the pram
vivas vagn/hat/shoe/X -- possession
mammas/pappas X--- possession
det er Vivas--- said for temporary possessions too, and even for showing interest in something.
boo-ai --- when something falls
det er X --that is X
Viva tar den--- Vidar will do it/take it
Mamma/Pappa tar den--- ordering mamma/pappa to do it/take it.
kom hit-- come here
fel haal-- wrong way
hit aat/dit aat -- (this way, that way)
lese den --- read it
oov X -- big X
rut/baa/gunt/bunt/vit/fart/ransh/pint/lila/yeyo X (red/blue/green/brown/white/black/orange/pink/purple/yellow)X
det er fel --- that's wrong
aaker bil/bus/rushtana --- travel by car/bus/go on the slide
Lots of deictics, which he has had from the very beginning, although they have changed a little over the past year. His favourite ones are currently `dai' and `den', meaning `that location' and `that thing' respectively. His name for himself is Viva.
Here are his most common phrases:
Eter mat
(inte) bytte bleier
Eter upp den
Off den --- take that off
bort den--- take that away
inte Mamma/Pappa, bare Viva--- not Mamma, just Vidar
on, inte off
massa X --- lots of X
sover
sitter fast--- when something is stuck, or can't be moved by him.
sitter vagn--- sit in the pram
vivas vagn/hat/shoe/X -- possession
mammas/pappas X--- possession
det er Vivas--- said for temporary possessions too, and even for showing interest in something.
boo-ai --- when something falls
det er X --that is X
Viva tar den--- Vidar will do it/take it
Mamma/Pappa tar den--- ordering mamma/pappa to do it/take it.
kom hit-- come here
fel haal-- wrong way
hit aat/dit aat -- (this way, that way)
lese den --- read it
oov X -- big X
rut/baa/gunt/bunt/vit/fart/ransh/pint/lila/yeyo X (red/blue/green/brown/white/black/orange/pink/purple/yellow)X
det er fel --- that's wrong
aaker bil/bus/rushtana --- travel by car/bus/go on the slide
Monday, 3 September 2012
September 3rd 2012. Vidar is in exuberant mood today. 2years 3.5 months. He asks for The Cat in the Hat Comes Back to be read to him, while he is in the bath. I say ``Do you remember what the cat in the hat was doing in the bath?´´ And he says ``Torte´´ (Swedish for cake). Yes, I say, he was eating cake. The funny thing is he has never had that story in Swedish, and yet he still translates instead of attempting to repeat the original words in English. Still, it means that he IS translating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)