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Showing posts with label sounds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sounds. Show all posts

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Nesta speaks!

Yes, we waited and waited and we are still sort of waiting but the thing is that Nesta has been speaking for a while now. We just haven't been able to understand what he was saying, until now- sort of. I think my ears finally are picking up the words he's trying to say. For example he says ka ka often, and my mom just thought he was talking about poop. I knew he wasn't, because the word we use for poop is poopoo and we sign this as well. Finally, it dawned on me that my child is saying aca, I often say to him ven aca  (come here). He also says ta, and he has done it recently when we're knocking on his grandma's door and I tell him that she's not there No está. Like this, I have been figuring out what Nesta wants to say to me. So I am making a list of the words he says in English and in Spanish. I have to listen to him more closely when it comes to words in English, because I assume he's saying all in Spanish. However, he says hot rather than caliente and that's because hot is easier to say. 

Has your child every said something that took you a minute to figure out and then when you did figure it out you wanted to hear it again? And then your child being a little punk wouldn't repeat it? Or maybe your kid sensed that you were too excited about whatever it is s/he said that he or she started thinking too much about it and decided not to repeat it for fear of saying it wrong? Whichever it is- this happened and it was oh so so so frustrating. I was changing Nesta and sometimes to entertain him I ask him to do his animal sounds for me. So I asked him if he was a lion: ¿Eres un león? and this time he did not growl, he said tigre. I continued to change him, and then I realized what he had just said. My mom often calls him a tigre and it all came together and I wanted him to say it again, but I pushed too much and he just stared at me and then growled. I growled too ROAR I was so mad at myself for pushing him. This was like 3 or 4 months ago so it was a big deal. He still won't say any animal names, because sounds are so much more fun GROWL!

This has been a draft for sometime, and I just want to post it because it can be never ending.  Mainly I wanted to know how many words he knew. I feel like there are more words that he knows, but the ones in the lists below are definitely the ones he uses the most. He also started to say caliente and música just recently. Another thing he started to do is make new sound that he hadn't done before- these sounds are hard to explain so I keep thinking it is a new word. I'll figure it out soon enough I hope. 

Spanish                                                                 
Parque
Burbujas
Manzana
Pelota
Está
Ven
Aca
Gracias
Sientate
Pato
Agua
Pan
Abuela
Zapatos
Azul
Casa
Bebe
Tres
Música
Caliente

English
Hot
Bread 
Albert
Go
Truck
Shorts
Banana
Pocoyo

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Bilingual dogs?

Recently I was co-teaching a class with a woman whose native tongue is Spanish. She speaks English as a second language and has been in the United States for three years. She was trying to get a kid to play with some toys, and she kept making the animal noises to get the 2-year-old's attention. I joined in with her, and suddenly we were both barking and ribbit-ing. The funny thing is that she took a toy dog and said "guau-guau" and I said "ruff, ruff." We looked at each other and laughed. She then said to me, "you know that animals speak different in English and in Spanish." 
Then I suddenly remembered having that conversation in the past, and now I realize that my animals speak mostly English! This does not bode well for someone who is teaching her son Spanish. It really doesn't matter, I just find it funny and interesting. The reason most of my animals speak English is because I have learned my animal noises from Gram. His animals are very sophisticated sounding- almost like the animal itself. It's weird how good he is at that. I am not, but I do try. I cannot even spell out what a rooster sounds like in English-but I know in Spanish is "qui-qui-riqui." Baby chicks say "peep-peep" in English and "pio-pio-pio" in Spanish. Gram now says "pio-pio" though. Does this mean he's learning Spanish? 
I went searching in Nesta's books the different noises that animals make, and I found a few that support the fact that animals do sound different in different languages.
One of the few bilingual books.
 
 "The baby chicks are singing peep peep peep"               "Los pollitos dicen pio, pio, pio."
                                          Lions growl.
                                          El leon dice GRRR.
                                                     El perro dice "guau-guau."
                                                      El gallo dice "qui-quiri-qui."

What do animals say in other languages?