The things kids say ...
June 24, 2005 at 4:32 PM
by Ashleigh
While I was lying on my bed earlier today expiring in the foetid heat that is Holland at 35 degrees, (let's not mention the smell of living in a canal city either...) I got to thinking about some of the things kids say and how having a bilingual kid gives oh so many opportunities for funny verbal mistakes.
Like ...
- An orange juice in Dutch is a sinasappelsap, pronounced si-nas-app-el-sap and Seb when he was learning Dutch and had co-incidentally just had a lesson from me about what the real names for genitalia were in English, asked at school for 'penisappelsap'. You could see the teachers blushing from here ;)
- Joe loves the Incredibles, but he gets the word 'Incredible' and the Dutch word for currant buns - 'krentenbollen'- mixed up. So the Incredibles become the Inkrentenbollen. New Dutch superheros maybe?
- Joe calls a helicopter a 'Heli-de-doktor'
- Seb was most concerned about having a 'crap in his elbow' the other day. Once we stopped falling about laughing we ascertained it was a crack, as in cracked skin on his elbow :)
They also make up words to songs, so if they can't find the right words they insert 'fart' 'poo' and various other bodily functions into the bits they can't remember. Gotta be 'cos they're boys right?
On the more serious and insightful side, Seb told me today that the 'air is full of the green smell of summer'. In the spring when he was three he told me that 'the daffodils looked like dancers swaying in the wind'.
Joe is not insightful yet really, but he makes up rhymes about breastfeeding which is really sweet. Like 'Boobies are lovely and brown and lovely and brown and full of milk'.
Kids, I love 'em.