Do you speak Julia?

It is interesting hearing a child learn to speak and particularly interesting for me as I am learning a language (Spanish) myself.

Julia has two languages to learn - Spanish from her mother and English from the rest of her current world.

She also makes up words of her own to fill in the gaps, so the result is a blend of Spanglish toddler talk. It’s quite creative and often quite funny.

Here are some of her words:

Buo - is milk (hot or cold). I don’t know where this one came from. The Spanish for milk is ‘leche’ so there’s no obvious link there.

Wei-wei - that’s her word for me, grandad. I think it came from ‘abuelo’ the Spanish word for grandad and I think she picked up on the ‘welo’ sound within the word. I rather like being Wei-wei

Ma-ma, not to be confused with Mammy  - is what she calls Margaret. The ‘ma’ sound, obviously comes from the ‘ma’ in grandma. Often Julia shouts it very loudly indeed.

Wei-wei - Nina - is her word for grandma Nidia and (just recently) Wei-wei Lala for grandad Carlos. Wei-wei is now her word of choice for grandparents.

Memes - are socks. The Spanish for socks is ‘calcetines’ but in Latin America they are medias (as in halves) and memes is obviously a corruption of medias.

Tu - is you (of course), but Julia uses it for ‘me’ (as herself). Lucy would refer to her as ‘tu’ and she thinks that’s her name. I tried to get her to say me, but it’s far too confusing for a toddler (or a granddad).

Ollybolly - is Holly, our dog. She does call her olly when issuing a command, which she has started to do. “Olly, no!” is a common one.

Oh-Oh - means there’s a problem and it’s such a useful word. Anything from a pain in the foot, a lost item or something dropped on the floor. There was an incident when Julia was climbing on a chair and grandad told her to be careful and come down. She didn’t heed his advice, slipped and banged her ear. This incident was reported to mum and dad with the damning sentence: Oh-oh, wei-wei ear.” Recently, she has had a cold and this was called ‘oh-oh nose’.

Bee - this is a bee, but also any other insect from a fly to an ant, although I think I’ve now taught her ‘ant’.

Beeba - is bib, the thing you wear for dining when you’re two. She is very fussy about her bibs or beebas and many have names. Plane beeba is a freebie from KLM. It is also a hairclip, from the Spanish ‘horquilla’ and ‘bedcover’ from ‘cubrir’.

Dada isn’t dad (that’s daddy) but is does mean poo, house and spoon. Tom told me about the first one and I haven’t heard it. Normally when it’s a No 1, she gets anxious and points to her belly. That’s the sign to run for the potty. She was saying ‘caca’ so perhaps that’s corrupted to dada. House is ‘casa’, so close-ish and spoon is ‘cuchara’. A lot of words are picked up and used because they sort of rhyme - I guess they sound right. Bee dada is one of her favourite spoons - it’s a spoon with a big yellow handle and a picture of a bee on it.

Mano is brother, from the Spanish hermano.

Babbies - are strawberries or raspberries.