Dji aPa

aPa: Après une recherche interminable dans la maison, apa?, apa?, apa?, il a trouvé ce qu'il cherchait et moi j'ai compris que mon fils en était déjà accro (iPad).

Dji: l'ordre de venir vers lui, pour une personne ou pour un objet qu'il ne peut atteindre (ici)

Si: Aussi un ordre (assis)

Pou: N'importe quelle bavette, nommée en l'honneur de sa bavette préférée, mettant en vedette nul autre que Winne the Pooh

Toto: En général, véhicule sur roues: auto, camion, autobus et, tout récemment, sa poussette. D'une logique infaillible. Reste à voir si sa toboggan recevra aussi l'appellation.

Nè, no: il l'aime tellement qu'elle vient en version originale ou traduite (neige, snow)

D'autres mots tous récents:

Ma (milk)

ibou, abou: Babou (le nom d'un personnage dans son livre d'histoire)

Tété: Tetah (le nom de sa grand-mère paternelle)

C'est chaud

bas (bas, bottes)

dou dou (tout en flattant les cheveux au lieu de frapper sur la tête)

Bart (Simpson)

les chats (avec l'article)

dodo

tourne (avec les morceaux de casse-tete)

fermé

Non mais!

For the last 6 to 8 weeks, Karim has been saying 'non mé' but we could not figure out what he meant. We joked that he was saying 'no way' and I got into the habit of replying 'yes way!'

Then I noticed that he was signing the word for 'more' and this was confirmed with his day home educator as she had taught him the sign. Once I understood what it was, he started using it quite a bit with me at home as I encouraged him to do so while using the word 'encore' or 'more'. Then I heard him say, along with the gesture, 'mé' and it dawned onto me 'non mé' meant... 'no more'! Albeit with a slight French-speaking accent :)

It feels as though his productive language is about to boom... he's added so many words and sounds as if he is telling us stories all the time. We just haven't figured out yet what most of his words mean. We are discovering almost every day another word of his. The most recent one is Tété, one that he uses now every morning while pointing at the phone. He is asking his father to call Tetah, as they do every morning.

A couple of days ago, he saw a laminate picture of himself, waved at it and said his name... something like Titim. I am not quite sure how he pronounced it, but I have no doubt that he named himself.

Non mais... mon fils est un petit génie ;)

19 sur 19

Nouveaux mots de Karim, surtout grâce à Grand-Maman, Grande-Mouline à Parole qui vient de nous rendre visite: toto (auto), Tata (Tigrou), Mena (Minoune), hi, lumière, le nez, boum, wouf, done (donne?), oh non. Et sûrement pleins d'autres qu'on n'a pas encore pigés.

Liste compilée le 15 septembre: pomme, wow, dog, miaou (ou miaow, je suis pas sûre).

Si on ajoute à ca maman, papa, balle, dehors et chat, ça fait 19 à 19 mois.

Il ne pense qu'à 'ça'

The house occupants now all have they own name. 'Papa' was referred to by name early on, but Maman only got a emphatic 'Pa' sound until Karim started to attend his day home... 'Maman' came only when the need arose, that is, when Maman went away!

Karim also knows our cats by name. When asked where they are, he points at the orange one if I ask about Tigrou and at the grey one if I enquire about Minoune. One evening, sitting in his high chair from which he often observes the cats circling around hoping for food droplets, he pointed and said 'ssss', 'ssss' repeatedly. When I realized what he was doing, I said 'sssssa', then 'chat' (cat). Karim laughed and tried again: 'ssss', 'sssssssa!' He has been rehearsing the sound ever since, every now and then completely out of a context, as if he is simply practicing the new sound combination. Sometimes I make the sound first to distract his attention from something and he repeats after me with a smile.

Quickly, I realized that the semantic category represented more than his two pets. Tessie the dog that we meet most mornings triggers a long 'ssssssa', as well as the magpies or just the sound of them. Same drill with the airplanes he notices in the sky. Most recently, Karim labeled an elephant he saw on television with the convenient 'sa'. "Nice!", I observed, "my son refers to all non-human beings with the word 'sa'!'' Airplanes must be an accident of perception, quite understandable given that just like birds a) they are in the sky, b) they move around, and c) they make noise. But my own understanding of Karim's world in words was limiting, because later he showed me a nice painting on the wall, 'sssssa!' 

Meanwhile, 'ba', which earlier purpose was precisely to name anything interesting, now has a narrower meaning, that of 'ball'. It is interesting to note that both with 'ba' and 'sa', Karim seemed to be using them first to designate their actual referent, that of a ball and of a cat. But then, perhaps upon being praised for using these terms, he generalized their use to all things he finds fascinating or wants to draw our attention to.

Karim, go get a book!

I wrote my first blog entry over 4 months ago, and it seems that  Karim's receptive skills have improved so much that now I notice what he doesn't understand as opposed to what he does. Still, I was amazed a couple of weeks ago when, sitting in the living room, I asked him to go get a book . He had no context to go by and no previous experience quite similar to this one, but he walked into his playroom and returned shortly thereafter with a book that he handed me to read to him. Pretty amazing if you ask me.  

'Bah!' [finger pointing]

Karim is still in the very early stages of his productive language skills. At the moment, his favourite word is 'bah' and usually, but not always, refers to a ball, or rather 'balle' in our household. He uses the same sound for his farewells, short for 'baye-baye'. Or for something he wants to draw our attention to. Yep... 'bah', especially when it comes with a little tiny pointing finger, turns out to be a hell of a good communicative strategy... Karim gets pretty much what he wants when he 'bahs' away. 

I should try it next time Yasser leaves the dishes on the countertop. Or when I find the brand new car that I am shopping for right now. You never know... Maybe it will entice the sales guy to give me a better deal. But then again, it's not so cute when I do it.

A resolution I can (finally) keep!

I got the best New Year present ever... if my ear didn't trump me! My son made a distinctive Arabic sound that I can't even begin to describe but I *know* it is Arabic for having heard the phoneme so often and having tried to pronounce it myself (I have only managed to produce a pale imitation of it).

(January 10 update: This morning I heard Karim make the same sound while his father was present. Upon asking, 'did you hear this, honey?', his father confirmed right away: 'Yes, he's making Egyptian sounds.' My reply: 'I knew it!')

Today then symbolically marks the beginning of my son's language development, at least from the view point of an observing adult (of course, from the perspective of his brain, language has been developing BEFORE birth). I couldn't wish for a better way to start the year, and this blog. As we embark on 2013, I vow to document his language progress from the perspective of a Mom and trained linguist (a resolution I KNOW I can keep!).

So let's start with who this son of mine is, linguistically speaking. Karim was born on March 13, 2012 in Edmonton, Alberta, to a French-speaking mother and an Arabic-speaking father. English is the language of the outside environment, and the language that he hears when his father and I speak to each other (we are both fluent second language speakers of English, the one and only language that we share). Since birth, Karim has been exposed to French and English on a daily basis. I have been speaking French to him almost exclusively while during the first several weeks of his life, his father spoke English to him. Between the age of 14 to 24 weeks, Karim was intensely exposed to Arabic as we visited his father's side of the family, while continuing to being exposed to French through me and to English as well, though to a lesser extent. Since our travel, his father has been speaking Arabic as much as English to him.

I have a bit of catching up to do because Karim has been making some language-related gains in the last several weeks. He's been demonstrating receptive skills for about 8 to 10 weeks. Mostly, he has been associating words with actions and objects:

- He claps in his hands when he hears 'bravo'. (7 months)

- One morning during a visit at my Mom's... my mother was feeding him, Karim tilted his head to the side. My Mom looked at him and praised him with 'ah le coquin'. Since then, he tilts his head to one side when he hears the phrase or does it on his own to get our attention at the table. He also does it from time to time when we Skype with Grand-Maman. (7 months)

- Similarly, he splashes water in the bath upon hearing 'on fait de l'eau' (let's make some water). (around 8 months)

- I have been singing a song about his name when we go by his bedroom door where we displayed colourful letters of his name. Upon hearing the song when engaged in some other activity, he interupts what he is doing to look at his door. (around 8 months)

- He understands 'no', as demonstrated by a pause in what he is about to do, looking at us, then turning around to something else, or carrying on after acknowledging our disapproval! (around 8 months)

- During bath time, I read him a story from his bath book. One night that he was playing with some other bath toy, I told him the story without taking the book in my hands. He looked around and reached for the book. At first, I thought that the intonation I used gave him the hint because I always told the story with the same exagerated intonation (almost as if I was singing). Later I tried with a strikingly different intonation... he still reached for the book, albeit not as promptly. Then I tried with the same intonation, but with non-intelligible stretches of sounds. He still reached for the book. Hence, I think I can conclude that he is attuned to both intonational contours and stretches of words. (around 8 1/2 months)

(Early January update: I tried to 'mix and match' cues. While in his bath, I told him the first few lines of the story book, then said, as if I was continuing the story, "on fait de l'eau".  It went like this: "Bonjour! C'est moi Pipo, le poisson clown" (Karim reaches for the book). "Au concours de grimace, le roi c'est moi. On fait de l'eau" (with intonational contour consistent with the storytelling. Karim immediately splashes water with a grin.)

More recently, he has also started to produce a few syllables that he seems to attach meaning to:

- He says 'mama' when he needs something... especially when he's hungry or wants to be picked up by me. (8 1/2 months)

- We had been waving goodbye to him, accompanying the motion with 'Bye Bye', for a couple of weeks when one morning, he made the gesture and said 'ba'! He's been doing the motion with the associated 'ba' sound consistently ever since, though he has not linked it to the appropriate context for producing it yet, i.e., for him it is not leave taking. It seems like it is a simple language game that he uses somewhat randomly and/or when he wants our attention, probably because he noticed we stop what we are doing when he does so and show enthusiastic approval. (9 months)

This concludes the first of many entries to come. Happy New Year Year, everyone!

(A note to my readers: while my native language is Canadian French, I will write this blog in English so that Karim's father can follow/contribute to my blog, along with others interested in language acquisition who do not have reading knowledge of French. I trust that my francophone readers will forgive me... it's a good exercise for you anyways!)

(Please also note: I will do my best to use common language to describe his progress, but do let me know if it becomes too linguisticky for you as I may, at times, use technical terms to offer the best description possible.)