Don’t sweat it. Babies learn to speak the language when they learn, and they follow a specific timetable for doing it. Anglo culture has its motherese; other cultures speak to their children in ordinary language; still others ignore the child altogether, letting it learn by listening to the folks and talking with its siblings. Barring birth defects, children in all these cultures learn to speak their first language equally competently.
Language is not “taught” as such; your child’s brain will be a little language-learning machine, programmed from birth to separate well-formed from ill-formed input. Short of strapping the child in a basement, there’s not a whole lot you can do to change your child’s schedule for learning language.
As for correct English, either everybody or nobody speaks it, depending on your definition.
If I have one piece of advice for the linguistic apprentissage of any future delphlet, I would suggest you expose it to a second or even third language constantly, starting from infancy. It is not harmful to the development of English, and leaves you with a child who has easily become fluent in two languages, with an expanded world view, and better able to learn other languages in the future. (I know some kids who are now fluent in Croatian, Esperanto, and French, and some others who are the same in French, English, and Polish. It’s really cool.)
Anyway, getting back to cats. I speak to our cats in a variety of languages, including
English (Who’s a cute fur!),
French (Qui est mon chaton préféré!),
Spanish (¿Quién es mi gatito hermosito? ¿¡Eres tú!?),
Esperanto (Hej! Kiu estas mia bona katido? Chu VI??? Jes!),
Italian (Sei il mio bello gatto?), and
Japanese (Kawaii nekko desu ne?!)
all of which they, um, seem to understand equally well.
Typical kitty conversation with my cat Zazou:
“Aaaaaaaaa! It’s a FUR!! Aw, kmear you cute fur! Who’s a cute fur! Mmmmmm! You’re daddy’s cute fur, yes you are, yes you ARE! Mmmm, cuddle the fur! You’re a WARM fur, yes you ARE! Kitty tummy rub! Want a skritchie skritchie behind the ears? Ooooooo! Skritchie skritchie skritchie skritchie! Kawaii nekko desu ne? BEEPIE on the kitty nose! You’re my puss fur! You’re my puss fur! Yes you is! Yes you is! Awwwww! Who’s my kitty kitty Zazzmatazz? Who’s a fuzzy face? (singing) Fuzzy faaace, Fuzzy faaace, running around tearing up the plaaaace… (/singing) You’re my special fur and I wuv you very much, yes I do, yes I do!..”
