Little Linguist

I’m pretty sure that although my daughter has dreams of being a lounge singer, she is better suited to be a linguist.

And it’s not just because her father is a genius and uses words I’ve never heard of before. And it’s not because before I had children, I had a pretty good vocabulary myself.

It’s not even because I suspect my husband of sneaking J.R.R. Tolkien books under her pillow at night, hoping some of Tolkien’s linguistic talent will go to her head through osmosis.

It’s because she’s already started down the path that leads to being a linguist.

I think one of the talents you must have to be a linguist is the ability to make up words on the spot and define them and then convince everyone that your definition is correct. She’s really good at this.

For example, during the Christmas season, we would drive around town looking at lights. If there was a house that had a display of lights that might put Las Vegas to shame, the Four Year Old would say, “HungaMunga!”
Without even waiting for the question that would ask for clarification, she would define her word for us: “HungaMunga. It means A LOT of lights.”

Pretty soon we were all bursting out with “HungaMunga!” anytime we saw a house with a lot of lights. Then my husband began to use it in a sentence, “That house has a lot of HungaMunga. Wouldn’t you agree?”

One day last week I was driving around completing errands with my kids in the car and my daughter started crying. If you know my daughter, it’s not very unusual for her to burst into tears all of a sudden and scare the heck out of you. Sometimes I can be strong enough and patient enough to deal with these little emotional outbursts. Other times she is so spontaneous in her crying that it surprises me and I respond by practically jumping out of my seat.

“What is wrong?” I asked. If you want to, you may believe that I asked this in the most patient and loving Mommy voice. If you want the truth…I probably asked it with a tone of exasperation.

“All the HungaMunga is gone!” she wailed.

I didn’t know whether to laugh because it’s obvious this word has become part of our family vocabulary or cry because I was too tired to explain the cycle of Christmas decorations yet again.

I could make a list of the words that she has made up and have become part of the household vocabulary, but I won’t because I need that list for future blog entries. I have to stretch the fun out.

Another language “issue” I’ve noticed about the Four Year Old, though, is her ability to make sure that everyone understands that words that are used in past tense, are REALLY used in past tense. What I mean is that she throws an extra “ed” on the end of a word to make it as meaningful as possible. She doesn’t just say, “Mommy, I missed you.” She says, “Mommy, I missed-ed you.”

I know this is a typical preschooler thing to do, but I am going to kind of miss (ded) those words when she grows out of them.