Sick of our blog yet? Let me try harder.

Okay, this post is really about keeping a record for our own sake rather than sharing with friends, because none of you (except maybe a grandparent or two--and possibly a linguist here or there) is interested in yet another list of words Edith says. She seems to be on the cusp of the much acclaimed "verbal explosion" that happens sometime during the second year, and having front-row tickets at this linguistic development show is so fascinating that I can't keep myself from trying to catalog it all. A few months from now when the number of words she knows is growing exponentially and it isn't possible to keep up, I'll stop the compilation effort. In the meantime, most of you may want to skip this post and wait for our next set of photos.

Tom and I were guesstimating last night what percentage of Edith's words would be discernible to an outsider. Say, someone with good will but not much imagination. I haven't actually done the tally, but as I make a list below, I'll put asterisks by the words that would be clear to anyone and figure it out. Our guess was 10%. I'll never again doubt parents who seem to be overinterpreting their kids' babble. Certain syllables and inflections are deliberate and consistent and really do mean something specific. They are gross initial versions of words. But they're amazingly far from the adult native speaker's pronunciation, and unless you are daily attune to and trying to communicate with their speaker, you are unaware they mean anything at all. I never realized just how much practice speech requires at first.

WORDS EDITH SAYS as of AUGUST 23, 2006 (15 1/2 MONTHS)

1. eat
2. amen*
   
3. more*
4. that
5. hot*
6. cold
7. help
8. please
9. all done
10. go*
11. no*
    
12. up*
13. milk
14. juice
15. bread
16. yogurt
17. apple*
18. orange
    
19. tomato
20. onion*
    
21. eye*
22. teeth
23. nose*
24. ear
25. toes*
26. knee*
27. leg
28. arm*
29. elbow
30. hat*
31. shoe
    
32. book
33. dog*
34. woof*
35. meow*
36. bird
37. fish
38. squirrel
    
39. bear
40. tiger
41. turtle*
42. moo*
43. butterfly
    
44. ball*
45. flag
46. flower
47. tree
48. street
    
49. bike
    
50. airplane
51. car
52. bus
53. balloon
54. purple*
55. bubble*
    
56. music
57. change
58. bath
59. door*
60. outside
61. "E"
62. "L"
    
63. mama*
64. dada*
65. Bismarck
    
66. Harrison
67. Hannah
68. Cicianna
69. Torrey
70. Maya
71. Joshua
72. Bob
    
73. Pop-pop*
74. uh-oh*
75. bye-bye*
76. round and round
    

Huh, so a much better precentage are understandable than we guessed, more like 1/3. Maybe it's just that the other 2/3 are so far from the mark... ? Flag sounds like bye-uh! (always with the exclamation point--tone is part of the clue in many of these cases); Harrison sounds like Aow-uh.

Assignment: Use at least ten of this week's vocabulary words in a story. Try to make at least 37% of your story intelligible to your listener.