That children are innately creative I know, but I still almost every day marvel at our son’s way of creating and explaining the world around him, particularly so when it comes to languages. The other day our son woke up from his midday nap and started to speak English, talking about a white house and windows. He must have seen a dream in English I believe, and I am so happy that for him different languages are the most natural thing in the world. Lately, when he speaks to me, he always uses Swedish and when his attention focuses on his mother he always tries to speak Japanese. And now comes the fun part and the reason for this post – our son has made his own little language mix to be able to express things where he lacks vocabulary or just does not associate a word with a particular language.
The verb to do in Japanese is する, suru, and in Japanese you can put many substantives and ad する to turn them into verbs, like 喧嘩する, to do a fight, or 洗濯する, to do laundry (just like in English). Our son has developed an affection for する, so sometimes when speaking Japanese he sometimes say むくする, to peel to do (he loves to peel his own bananas so he uses this phrase a lot), basically stacking an unnecessary する after a verb. This habit he has now started to use when trying to explain things to his mom where he he only can think of the Swedish verb and not it’s Japanese counterpart (or just has the image that it is a universal word). Therefore it has become kissa する, when wanting to pee – pee to do. And plaska する, when wanting to play in the water puddles – to splash to do. I find it quite adorable and cannot wait to see the face of his Japanese-only speaking relations when our sons takes their hand and wants to titta biltransporten する, watch the car transport.
Now I will go to do and splash to do in the puddles together with my son. It will be fun, he loves to play to do in water. I will see to do you in next weeks blog post.
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