bodhi tree swaying

I’m reading a fascinating article right now about the possible role of language in supporting delayed gratification, the strength of which has been shown to be a strong predictor of success. (Children who are able to resist eating a cookie for longer end up being much more successful than those who simply gobble the cookie down).

However, it’s this statement that left me stunned:

…by the age of three, children from professional families actually have larger recorded vocabularies than the parents of the welfare families.

That’s astonishing, although I’d recently read that many British teens use no more than 500 words their day-to-day conversations, which is about the same number of words my 23-month-old knows and uses. If I were a teen who knew that my vocabulary was no larger than that of a toddler, I’d grab a dictionary pronto. But they likely don’t care, and aren’t even cognitively able to care, …

From the Wall Street Journal:

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the

…

There’s a tantalizingly brief interview in the Guardian with linguist Guy Deutscher, who holds with the rather unpopular notion that language shapes the way we perceive the world. He gives a rather fascinating example of an Australian language which doesn’t have notions like left/right or behind/in front of, but instead uses the cardinal directions to indicate relative position. This gives the language’s speakers a kind of mental GPS system, so that they are always aware of direction.

I argue that the mother tongue has considerable influence on the way we think and perceive the world. But there’s a great deal of historical baggage attached to this question and so most respectable psychologists and linguists won’t touch it with a bargepole.

It’s like being a historian and talking about national character, isn’t it?

…

Some University of Oxford researchers have compiled a list of the Top 10 Most Irritating Expressions in the English language. You know you want to read it:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It’s a nightmare
8. Shouldn’t of
9. 24/7
10. It’s not rocket science

The list appears in a new book, Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, by Jeremy Butterfield.

At the end of the day I personally think this is a fairly unique list.

Oxford Researchers List Top 10 Most Annoying Phrases | The Underwire from Wired.com

I was talking the other day about how Maia is signing and how she’d been repeatedly using a sign that neither Shrijnana nor I could figure out. She’s made up signs for “cheerios” (which she’s addicted to — that’s a modification of the sign for “more”) and “music” (that’s kind of sad — she waggles one arm in what is evidently an imitation of her father dancing).

Anyway, so we thought she’d made up yet another sign, but my clever wife figured out that she had been trying to tell us that she wanted a bath! (She was doing the sign, but in a modified way). Poor Maia must have been so frustrated wanting to play in the bath but not being able to get her dense parents to understand her.

Incidentally, neither of us is a signer. We’ve learned what little we know from The Complete Idiot’s Guide …

Maia (who just turned 14 months) is understanding a remarkable amount of what we say. She can pick up any of her books when we name them, she can point to her ears, nose, tongue, teeth, belly, toes, foot, etc.

But the most surprising things are the words we didn’t teach her. One of her favorite toys is a firewire cable. It’s not too surprising that it turned out she could pick out the firewire cable when asked. But the other day when I mentioned “headphones” she draped the firewire cable over her head, imitating a pair or headphones! And today I discovered that she knows what a dishwasher is.

She’s been making up signs for things as well, so she also does a lot of talking. She made up a sign for “cheerios” (which she loves) and a sing that means both “music” and “dance.” Today she made up another …

I just got a laugh from my wife by using the above line. No, we don’t have some kind of non-traditional family framework, it’s just that Maia so far only knows one word, and it’s “dada,” which she uses indiscriminately for all adults. As her real dada I still get a thrill whenever she calls me that, and it doesn’t seem to dampen my adoration of her when Shrijnana walks into the room to be greeted with an enthusiastic set of dadas. Actually, Maia often calls me “hada,” which really gets the oxytocin flowing..

Dada is in fact her all-purpose word. She says what sound like whole sentences, which go like this: “dadada dada dadadada dadadada da dada da dadadada.”

Maia has also just learned how to push herself up to sitting, just a few days after she passed the 10 month stage. Both her dadas are …

On Aug 3 Maia said the word “dada.” She’d been babbling for months and her experiments in phonics had often included “dada” (which she said for the first time on Fathers’ Day, bless her) but this time she was really excited. She knew, this time, that it was a word. She also seemed to know that the word applied to me. When I tapped my chest and said “who’s this?” she’d say “dada.” When Shrijnana asked the same question she just got a stare. That, plus her obvious excitement, convinced me that she was finally making a word, and not just a noise.

Sometimes she even says “Hi, Dada” (or “hada”).

I’ve heard her say “mama” three times. In each case she’d seemed a bit distressed and the word just came out. I don’t think she can say “mama” deliberately, but that she knows the word and that under stress the …

As well as the sign for “milk,” Maia now knows the one for “change.” So when she starts to get a bit squirmy and whiny she can now let me know whether she wants to be changed or whether she wants milk (that one works for when she wants to sleep as well, because she generally nods off to an ounce or two of formula).

She can’t actually make any of the signs yet, but she does respond to them with big smiles and excited, waving arms, so it’s easy to work out what she wants. The only time this doesn’t work is if she’s very hungry and gets herself into a state. When she’s crying she just doesn’t respond to the signs. It’s like she’s saying “Stop the stupid hand-gestures and get me some milk, dammit!” (She picked up the bad language from me).

I can’t tell you how much easier …

Maia’s been surprising us with her communication skills. No, she’s not quite talking yet, although she babbles like crazy and from time to time we could swear that she’s said words like ?hello,? ?yeah? (in response to questions), and even the other day a ?dada.? No, it’s her comprehension skills that have impressed us.

Since we adopted her just over two months ago we’ve been demonstrating a few basic words in sign language — mommy, daddy, milk, change — and in the last couple of days she’s firmly grasped the meaning of ?milk.?

When she’s getting a bit whiny and we make the sign for ?milk? she now instantly breaks into smiles and wriggles with pleasure. I’m not sure whether she’s happier because she knows food’s on the way or because finally her mom and dad have shown signs of understanding her and no longer have …