More thoughts....

[conuly]

(Yes, I'm thinking, weird, huh?)

The other day, Ana and I are sitting outside on the boat on our way into the city. And you should know, sitting outside on the boat is the highlight of Ana's day, doubly so if we get to do it twice, or if we're on the cool new boats with elevators where you can sit outside sans roof. Okay, that's not really necessary, but I thought I'd mention it.

There's another girl there, about 8 - 11 years old, with her father. English-speaking, no accent. We're talking a bit, and at one point she turns to her father to point out something "Look, Papa!"

I've never heard that outside of older books. Never, ever.

My mother calls her mother Ma. I didn't find that out into fairly recently, because to us she refers to her mother as Bonne-Maman, which is what we call her. My sister and I have called our parents Mommy and Daddy since we were talking. Sometime after my father died, my mother suggested that we didn't *have* to call her Mommy, we could say Mom instead, and Jenn just kinda gaped at her as though this was the most absurd thing she'd ever heard in her life. It would be kinda silly, to change our mother's nickname for the sake of conformity.

Now we call her Nanen, though, if we're around Ana, because otherwise Ana gets a bit confused. We don't mind calling Jenn Jenn around Ana, but we try to call Mommy Nanen.

So... what do you call your parents? Bonus points if what you call them is a term from somebody else's language/dialect. Half bonus points if it's a private term, or one from a language/dialect you have, but nobody else (or at least, very few people)in your area has.

Comments

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

When I was little, I called my parents Maman and Daddy. (My mother being French-Canadian and my father Anglo.) Then when I was school-aged, I conformed to Mom and Dad. When I became estranged from my mother, she became just that: "My mother." And now that my father is getting older, has step-grandchildren and a towncar, I call him Pepere (acute accent on the first 'e' and grave on the second.)

I've never met anyone outside of my family who uses the word, which means more literally 'little old man' (my grandmother being 'Memere' - 'little old woman') and I don't know if the tradition comes from my grandfather's Belgian family or my grandmother's Metis one, but we use it both as the proper name and as a common one for any cute or stubborn little old man, the kind who drives too slow on his Sunday drives in his big old Chrysler.

My dad, despite being Anglo, spent enough time with my mother's family to appreciate the name, especially since his step-grandkids call him by his first name. It's prompted him to start calling me Grasshopper. Go figure. :-P