Learning English

I've always heard English is the hardest language to learn.

I had a friend who taught English as a second language through the Berlitz school. In a conversation meant to teach our language, he asked one pupil, "What would you do if your boss fired you?" His student was confused as to why his employer would light him on fire.

We also have "lead" (as in "lead the horse to water"), "lead" (as in "sharpen the lead in your pencil") and "led" (as in "he led the team to victory"). And then there is "affect" and "effect"; "complimentary" and "complementary"; as well as "to," "two," and "too."

I am an English major and these things have always been fairly easy for me, but now that Tyler is starting to talk, I'm seeing how confusing things can be.

For example, we have "anah" (which means "another") and "unuh" (which means "hungry"). They are pronounced exactly the same. Usually Tyler will scratch his chest along with "unuh" -- he was supposed to rub his tummy for "hungry," but whatever works, right?

We also have varying forms of raspberries. There is a very distinct slobbery raspberry that means "squirrel." He will occasionally pronounce "girl" with the same raspberry. A significantly different raspberry means, "I spilled water." [This started because he pushed the water button on the fridge and drenched himself. I did that mean little 'I'm-not-laughing-at-you-but-I-am' raspberry noise that I didn't know anyone did after high school. And he adopted it as a word. He "pwshhh"es when he pushes the button on the fridge, when he knocks over my cup of water, or when his water or juice leaks out the straw of his cup.]

Here are the other 'words' Tyler knows at 20 months (though I doubt many people would recognize them as words):
• Roomba (our robot vacuum) - mmmmmba
• duck - duh
• blue or blueberry - bbbb (with a slight raspberry motion of the lips)
• drink - dddd (with a slight roll of the tongue)
• shoe - dddd or duh (but different from 'drink'. there is no tongue rolling. and different from 'duck.' 'shoe' is more emphatic.)
• sock - sssssss
• water - wawa
• watermelon - wama
• hot - pants like a dog
• up - uh
• down - dn
• upstairs - uhhstahs
• downstairs - dnstahs
• outside - ahtside
• potty - puhpuh
• puppy - dtdt or mffmfff (woof, woof) (he will occasionally roar at a picture of a lion or bear)
• moon -mn
• purple - ppl
• TV - t--d-- (- indicates a rolling of the tongue)
• more - bah (with clapping of the hands)
• all done - ahh don (along with emphatic waving of the hand)
• no, no, no, no, no - nananananana
• don't touch - dah tah
• apple - ah-TAH
• banana - nana
• bye-bye - bye-bye
• cracker - caca, maybe?
• and he still pushes on his nose for "pig"

And here are the names, though the pronunciations may be a little iffy:
• Mama - he manages to pronounce this with a b or two. But if you ask him to say "m&m," he very clearly says "mama"
• Dada
• Paw-Paw
• Nanny
• Pa
• Grandma - again, i think there is a b or two. maybe "baampa"
• Grandpa - or "baapa"