The Spoken Word

Our family celebrated Eli's birthday last week. As we finished our morning family prayer, he mastered the word "Amen." He's been saying it "Mah-MEN" for a good while, which sometimes ended up sounding more like "Mama." But on the morning of his second birthday he said "Amen" for the very first time. I think he knew he'd finally gotten it right; he looked mightily pleased with himself.

In the past couple of days he's also come out with a couple of words that make me want to smother him with kisses every time he says them. They are "sure" and "yep." The "yep" comes out sort of a cross between hill-billy and southern hick. And he uses it appropriately: "Shall we put your shoes on, Eli? Yep," or "Can you turn on the light, Eli? Yep." Love it.

As most of you know, Tom speaks German to Eli. And as maybe some of you know there are many, many words that are similar or the same between English and German. So when Eli says "pizza" the 'i' is short, as a German would say it, and when he says "wind" he pronounces the 'w' as any German toddler would, with a 'v' sound.

There are two words, however, which sound exactly the same to Eli's ears but have entirely different meanings and uses. Isaac is involved with karate, and has been trained to yell with every ounce of energy in his formidable soul "AIYA!" (pronounced eye-ah) with each punch or kick. Well, yelling anything is great fun for a toddler, so of course Eli has picked this up with enthusiasm. The funny thing is that the German plural of egg (Ei) is 'Eier.' Europeans in general aren't quite as into chewing on their 'r's as we are here in the States. So 'Eier' sounds for every useful purpose like Isaac's karate-chopping "AIYA!" I should also note that Eli's all-time favorite breakfast food are... you guessed it: eggs. Eli has spent many happy mornings standing on our table exclaiming with every ounce of energy in his formidable soul this love as he throws punches and takes a guarding stance. "Eier! Eier! Eier!"

 

Happy Birthday, Baby! Here's to many more spoken delights.