Things That Are Not Words

A rough translation guide to toddler-speak.

Following this week's theme, I figured I would list off some of the syllables (I can't really call them anything else truthfully) that Gabe utters in place of common words. After I come up with a sufficient number of entries (which might take me the entire day as my brain is pretty slow to remember things right now), I will try to get Gabe to repeat each of the words to offer proof of their mispronunciation. Well, if he's still mispronouncing them. Some of the ones that I remember were early pronunciations from well over a year ago. I will begin with the actual word and then give Gabe's equivalent.

Binky (yes, I know, this word is technically not a real word to begin with, but what can you do?)--First he called it "obi," which I was quite fond of, but that didn't last long enough to stick. Now he calls it "bitty."

Chocolate--Ghaucklit, man, that's tough to spell out, but there is a real guttural "g" sound at the beginning there.

Yogurt--Ergrits/wergrits/rergrits/yergrits (He's said it each way at least once this morning. Actually, this was the word that prompted this post as it was what he requested for breakfast this morning).

Oh dear god.

Last night, Libby took Gabe to the library to hang out in the children's section for a bit and brought home a Max and Ruby book and a DVD that Gabe picked out. It's called "Truck Adventures" and runs an unbelievable 90 minutes long (not looking forward to the next week of having this in the house). Gabe wanted the movie in as soon as he was done with breakfast so I obliged then came in here to start this post figuring I had fifteen minutes or so before he lost interest. In the time it took me to get to "chocolate" (which was about 5 minutes, I think), he lost interest (I can't blame him, really, the movie is just about as interesting as you would expect 90 minutes of following fire engines and garbage trucks to be). He came to the gate separating this room from the dining room, reached over the gate to the DVDs and grabbed "Cars." This is his "go to" movie and we have watched it something like 50 times in the past few months.

"Cars, cars!" he demanded. "No," I said, "we're watching your trucks movie. Finish that first and then maybe we can watch something else." I turned back to the computer and typed out the "yogurt" entry. I looked back over to him and he had removed the disc from the "Cars" case AND WAS LICKING THE DVD. So I guess he's not over CD eating, yet.

And time passes.

It's not late morning and Gabe just pulled off his PJs so I could get him dressed. After dressing, he sat on my lap for a few minutes. After a bit, I put my hand around his front and his shirt was wet.

"Are you drooling?" I asked.

"No drooling."

"Well, if you're not drooling on the front of your shirt, who is?"

"Uncle James."

He's obviously got a few finer points of lying to work out yet.

Back to the words.

Sparkly--Barkley (it took me the better part of the first day that he started saying this to realize that he wasn't talking about the big dog character on Sesame street named Barkley, and I sure started to wonder what his obsession with the big useless muppet was)

Wheat Thins--Weep Bins, I just like this concept.

Vacuum--Wack Yume (this would be much funnier if he would leave off the "m" sound at the end).

Rocket/space/whatever Ship--Rocket/space/whatever Shits

Focus--Fuck us (I'm just including these last two because they still make us laugh).

Oh, dear. There are so many that I could include here. To properly catalog them, I would actually need to create a dictionary because there are so few words that he pronounces with 100% accuracy, and so many of them are amusing pronunciations. He plays pretty fast and loose with the language, which I can sort of appreciate.

Oh, and no video this time, unfortunately. He wouldn't cooperate. I couldn't even get him to say "yogurt," which he's probably said twenty times on his own already this morning. Figures.