The Little Linguist
My nephew Danial speaks English very confidently. He may not get the grammar right every single time (neither do I for that matter, but who cares?), but he never let that stop him from saying anything. Sure, he mostly speaks what my sister calls the Disney language, ie; words and phrases picked up from cartoon shows, but isn’t that how kids learn English these days?
In fact, that’s also how I learned English. We didn’t have the Disney Channel then, but we did have the Mickey Mouse Club, along with other kiddy shows like The Electric Company and
Danial’s vocabulary is rather impressive too. I don’t think I could speak like that when I was his age. He once described to me in detail, a science experiment that he saw on the Discovery Channel, using words like trajectory and some others that I can’t even remember, let alone understand.
Of course, he has a habit of making up words too, so if he had just created some while talking to me, the joke was on me indeed.
The other day, Danial went to a friend’s birthday party and was chatting away with a Mat Salleh lady he met there. The lady was asking him all sorts of questions, including that about his parents’ occupation.
Danial knew that his father is an anesthesiologist, but he only knew how to say it in the Malay language, which is Pakar Bius.
So, imagine the look of horror on the lady’s face when Danial confidently told her that his dad is a Bius-er.
