You would have loved Anna when she was little! When she was about four, she came with me to a doctor's appointment. The doctor happened to have a med student working with her. The doctor pointed to my knee and asked the student "Do you know what that is?" Anna piped up with "Duh...that's the patella!"

(BTW, what the doctor was actually asking the student about was the patch of psoriasis on my knee)

Redwolf

I love it.

Sass

I have a friend whose daughter could point out her patella and carotid artery at a very young age (to the point of tedium!). We, friends of the family, used to joke that she might not be able to point out her head! I suppose the point is that rather than overload a young person with technical, albeit perfectly correct words, teaching a wide range of more useful everyday words might be of more benefit at an early stage.

For me, it's about balance - I never taught my kids (or should I say offspring / progeny?!) to say the likes of 'choo-choo' for 'train' because they were perfectly capable of learning the proper word.

yeah, I have to be careful when I have children. I'm well able to teach them the word "metathesis" or other linguistic term before they learn the word "house"

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Children are sponges. In my view, if you want to expand their brain without any hassle, bring them up bilingually. In Ireland, that is actually very simple to do if one or both parents have good Irish (more difficult, but not impossible, if you only have mediocre Irish). Two thirds of the world's population are bilingual. We are very far (needlessly as a country with two official languages) behind here in Ireland. By the way, Irish is the one to focus on at home as English is everywhere and so that will pretty much take care of itself!

For some reason, and I'm not sure why, there are very competent Irish speakers who do not use much Irish with their children, let alone bring them up through Irish. It is a wasted opportunity to give a gift of immeasurable value to the children.

There is an organisation who supports parents. http://comhluadar.ie/

OT: How many languages do you have, Lughaidh? I gather you are French, but you speak very knowledgably about Irish through the medium of fluent English.....

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Anna picked up "patella" from Schoolhouse Rock...we had the entire series on video, and she watched them obsessively (obsessively as only an ASD kid can!). By the time she was four, while she couldn't tie her shoes, she could parse any sentence you gave her, do complex multiplication problems, tell you when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, and explain how the circulatory system works.

Maybe we need to come up with "Rac Gaeilge."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Rock!

Redwolf

@Lughaidh: It is because the French were the conquerors and the Saxon peasants became their domestic workers. The French/Latin words were sophisticated because they were the language of the conquerors, and the Saxon words were base/uneducated because they were the language of the vanquished. Native English speakers would never say "I eat cow". We only say "I eat wild pig" here in the country where I live. We only use the word "pig" with a modifier otherwise we say "pork". Interestingly we have millions of wild pig here and I was in France one time and learned they are a delicacy called "sanglié" or something like that. It was sort of funny to me. This is all discussed in several great books on the history of the English language.

Many many Saxon words speak to the heart of the native English speaker whereas the French/Latin word does not feel the same. If we say "they were given a hearty welcome" (Saxon) to someone it feels very different than saying "they were given a cordial reception" (French). Winston Churchill was a master at using these "saxon" words to stir the English Speaking people in WWII. If you'll remember he said, "I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears". (all saxon words) This rallied the English speaking world to equip themselves emotionally to take on the axis powers and ultimately to liberate the world.

Now.....back to the SHIT we were talking about, I have always found it interesting in the USA how regional vulgarity is. My parents who were both people of faith for example would never say the "s" word or the "f" word, but used "hell and damn" like a strong adjective. I thought for a long time that "damn" was just a certain kind of democrat (LOL). Dad would always say" those damn democrats are doing such and such". My wife's people who are fundamentalist Baptist people feel to say "hell" or "damn" would probably damn them to hell, but they are appalachian country people and say "shit" like we never do here. Ie....my sweet quiet mother in law said last week end "boy that dog would love to just tear the shit outta that squirrel". Or she'll say "he's pile all of his shit into my storeroom". I want it all out of here. I think my parents would have died to hear that coming out her mouth. I've seen her literally take a soap cake to someone's mouth in the room that said "hell" or "damn". Oh well......in Texas (here in the country) we say "bullshit" or "shit" routinely but usually only in the presence of other men. Women who say it are considered a bit rough or crude. I'm not giving any normative statement about it, just telling you all how it works here.

There really is a lot of 'crap' being talked around here! Sorry, couldn't resist!
It's actually very interesting how different people are utterly offended by some words and not others and, for others, it works exactly the opposite way around.

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Although children are capable of understanding the "proper" word, they don't have all the phonemes to use them themselves for the first year or so. It can actually become a source of frustration for them when adults expect them to use normal words, let alone difficult ones, before they are ready for them.

In fact, we knew our first daughter could understand us long before she could make any word-like sounds so we taught her a few easy signs (i.e., sign language) to express herself and relieve the frustration she was feeling until her vocal chords caught up.

Japanese also has these "baby words". The concept of "baby words" is pretty well universal, so we taught them all of the baby words in both languages so they would have phonetically easy words to express themselves with.

When they knew and could use geegee, baabaa, and moomoo, I introduced them to the ordinary word equivalents "horse" and "sheep" and "cow", and they learned an important concept from the process, i.e., that there can be more than one correct word to describe any given thing.

I don't dumb down my speech to my kids but I also wouldn't deprive them of important tools they can use to express themselves in a way they feel comfortable with. To me, THAT is balance. (But of course, there is more than one "correct" way to raise children.)

And yes, Saoirse, they know how to say piss and shit in several different ways in both Japanese and English.

(The interesting thing about the American aversion to the word "toilet" is that "toilet" itself is in fact a euphemism. The term comes from the French (faire la) toilette "to have a wash/groom oneself". )

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

I agree that young children do not initially have the capability to use some of the phonemes associated with 'proper' words. I don't have very strong feelings on this one way or another, but avoiding 'baby words' certainly didn't hold my kids back in terms of speech development. My feeling is that when adults use baby words, we are mimicking the children when it should be the other way around. Teaching your daughter sign language - now that is inventive and impressive.