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.
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