conuly | THIS IS SO AWESOME!

1. Did I mention my consternation when I heard Ana saying "Awesome" all the time? I couldn't figure out where she picked it up, and then I discovered that it was from me. *I* say it all the time!

2. I was typing when Evangeline woke up, and she sat next to me and wanted to type too. So I asked her what word. Then I sounded the words out letter by letter and showed her the general area (row and half-of-keyboard) the letter was in - and she found the letters (the rrr letter or the sss letter) herself! COOL.

3. Then we did Starfall. We did M. One of the ones on M was mask. So I asked her "What do you think this is?" "Zombies?" So I sounded it out. Mmm. Aaaah. Sssss. K-k-k. Maaah. Sss. K. And she got it! "MAX!" The next one was masks. How does she say masks? "MAXES!" Maxes is a very consistent way to pluralize max, but of course mask isn't max. I find this inexplicably interesting, even though it's not actually. (Evangeline did the typing with help for this again. IS IT NOT TOTALLY AWESOME??? TELL HER AND ME HOW AWESOME IT IS!

i luv ana! ana luvs me!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yay Eva!! Nice job on the typing. Love, Mommy

I'll pass it along when she is done "getting her exercise".

AWESOME!

"Masks" is a particularly tricky word. The end is a ss ss in a row. Say it and think about what you're saying. We don't make sounds like that in English much, I'm fairly sure. I'm not surprised she hasn't mastered saying "masks" yet.

Let's see...

Asks
Basks
Casks
Flasks
Masks!
Tasks

Thank goodness there's no verb to skask!

I've heard people pronounce "asks" as "axe" or something close to that. I think most people pronounce "tasks" as "tasks" though. The rest aren't overly common words. I think most adults can handle it just fine though, I just can see how it'd be hard on a child learning it. I think it's a weird sound. Although, I don't generally, since I'm used to it by now.

I don't actually remember any difficulty pronouncing words when I was learning to speak, but then, that also somewhat mirrors what my mother says about me. I was later to speak than most of her children, but when I did, I spoke pretty clearly. I think I was of the sort that wanted to hold off until I could do it. On the other hand, I was talking when I was two, so I doubt I was ~that~ good at it. Probably just better than average for my age.

I don't think adults tend to comment about children's speech errors that much, at least, the ones I grew up around didn't, so I don't have memories of it to know what I was messing up. The comments I tended to get was on my pitch. I had a very high pitched voice that was annoying, but there was nothing I could do about that. Although, in retrospect, I wonder how much of that was people simply expecting me to be older than I was. It seems unlikely in that I always was small for my age, but there are various times when I was very young (2 to 4 or so) where it would make sense for people to treat me as older and people tended to treat me in ways that seem unusual for my age. So maybe it was the discrepency between me seeming older in some ways and still having some annoyingly young qualities. Hard to tell with this many years removed and without really reliable witnesses. Maybe a little bit of several things, including an unusually high pitched voice. It's still higher than many people expect who haven't met me, but it became a less annoying voice with age and changes I suspect that were purely physical.

Aks has been an accepted variant pronunciation for ask before ask was ask, though - whatever the sillies will say about it now.

I don't think adults tend to comment about children's speech errors that much, at least, the ones I grew up around didn't, so I don't have memories of it to know what I was messing up.

No, they don't, for a couple of reasons. First, because it's pointless - children will make mistakes and outgrow them without your help (and won't change just because you tell them to, not at that age) and second because you might possibly make them hesitant and reluctant to speak if you pester them too much about it.

Yup, good reasons not to do so, and I'm glad I wasn't badgered about the typical mistakes you expect a kid to make. It does, however, mean I don't have a record of my learning process.

Whereas for things that I had great difficulty learning or where the adults around me did make a big fuss, such as reading, I have a lot of memories about what it was like to learn. Of course, I was also several years older when I was learning to read than I was when I was learning to speak. Sure, I was still picking up vocabulary (still am actually) and probably some of the finer points, but I learned to read when I was 6 and my family tried to teach me when I was 5 or so, which is a long way from my early language learning where I did the bulk of it.

As to your other comment. Yup. :) It's great that she's getting good at the regular pluralizations. I do find these steps impressive, even though I know that almost all children do it. It's still impressive and it's nice watching such big obvious steps in learning unfolding before you.

Alas, my youngest nephew is going to be... I think 8 soon. The next youngest is turning 12 in September. I'm all out of really young family. Two of my nieces are graduating high school this year (the third is already a college graduate). My other two nephews are aged such that one is starting high school this coming school year and the other is currently in college. Lots and lots of nieces and nephews, but they're all growing up or have grown up. Quite far from early language acquisition.

But at any rate, just to drag us back to the post (not that your comment isn't interesting in its own right) I wasn't surprised that she says max for mask - you're right, sk at the end of the word is a fairly unusual combination, which is why I could list them off so easily. Nor am I actually surprised that she pluralized it regularly for her pronunciation.

I'm just pleased that she's internalized the special rule for making plurals of words that end in x.

I started typing in 1962. I had a manual typewriter. It was really Mama's but she let me use it. The keys are not in alphabetical order. Later, Iris learned touch typing in school.

I TYPED IN CAPITAL LETTERS, BECAUSE IT LOOKED MORE IMPORTANT. I used Mama's typing practice book.

Shadow

P.S. It is a coincidence that the cat has the same name as me.

Because of your personal experience with autism and child development and speech, I am about (momentarily) to put up some videos, and there is one of Topher I want you to see and tell me what you think of his speech development lately. Remember, he'll be 4 in a couple months. Do you think he's getting enough speech therapy? :-/

I can look at it, but while I know about typical speech development, and I know about being autistic, I don't know about autistic speech development. I'm definitely not qualified to judge how his speech is getting along, much less how much impact speech therapy has had on that.

:(

'Kay. You're still th emost qualified person I know outside of ASP (Aspecialparent community), where its also posted. But I know you'll give me an honest answer that's not safespace nicey nice approved. :-p

THIS IS SO AWESOME!

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IT IS VERY AWESOME AND TYPING IS VERY AWESOME.

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