I LOVE listening to my son try to translate son lyrics. He mis-hears them sometimes, so instead of taking the Chevy to the levy to drink whiskey and rye, he takes the Chevy to the levy to get crispy and dry.
And my daughter used to call outside “ah-sees,” which then evolved to “ah-doo,” and finally to outside.
There are a few other things they say that crack me up, though they’re old enough that a lot of the names they have for things are kind of descriptive. There’s a large sculpture near an office park close by that shows a huge man (possibly Zeus) coming out of the ground. A gigantic head comes out of the earth and, where appropriate, a large knee and a giant foot. My daughter calls it “The Falling Down Man.”
Hey, I missed this one the first time I looked! My sister and I still have this: we can understand each other with mouths full/while brushing teeth/at the dentist/after the dentist. I think it stems from that time, understanding each other’s half formed, made-up words. We also talk a lot in made-up words when we’re together, and combine Dutch and English into Dinglish, so that often other people can’t understand us.
We have our own, sensical Dinglish though, other people’s Dinglish makes no sense to me. My mum is friends with an expat who has brain damage and can only speak Dinglish, but he’s really hard to follow for us until we get the hang of it.
My mother was the first grandchild of my maternal great-grand parents.
She was doted upon and she called her mother’s parents Mama and Danny.
Danny because, well she was 2 or 3 years old and couldn’t pronounce the word correctly.
My great-grandfather thought it was great. His sweet little granddaughter had come up with a new name for him and he took ‘Danny’ as his stage name and played on the fiddling circuit including the Grand Ole Opry many times. To the day he died, he was known wide and far as Danny.
My son had his own language, too. He called it Bonish. I understood a little bit of it, but not much. It was primarily a written language, but also had spoken components as well. It was fairly robust. I wish I remembered more of it.
My little cousin on hearing the older relatives calling Grandmother’s dog, Spot, began to call the creature “Yuhspot.”
My toddler daughter’s name for her stuffed rabbit was Tuna Half. That came about when an older relative asked her what the bunny’s name was and she thought she was being asked how old she was.
My two year old refers to our friend’s 9 year old son, William, as “women”. He’s very introverted and serious and not entirely sure if he likes it or not.
Until 3 days ago when she was persuaded to give up dummies* at night she always took two to bed. She had ‘dummy’ and ‘ubber dummy’.
*pacifier, but you knew that, right?
Got updates on Poto and Gabengo just now: “The girls were born with normal intelligence. As of 2007, Cabengo worked on a supervised assembly line at a job training center; Poto cleaned tables and floors at a fast-food restaurant.” http://forgottenprophets.blogspot.com/2009/03/poto-and-cabengo.html
Going O/T; but do I take it that you live in the Netherlands, and have storks among your local wildlife? I love storks – sadly, they’re not part of the fauna of the UK, where I live.
Great-grandma Todd - Gagi
It may not count, but my pet name for my grandfather PR was Par, but I didn’t start calling him that until I was an adult.
My sister’s grandkids call her MiMi instead of grandma. Her husband is Pop-pop.
A much younger cousin called me Shuri, my sister Min and our cousin Sul. We still refer to each other by those names to this day. The younger cousin is now 30 and I’m 46.
I called my grandmother Mom for years because that’s what everyone else called her. (My mom has 6 brothers and sisters, all younger. The uncle who is closest to my age is only 2 years older than me.)
I just remembered that the aforementioned uncle was known as Dinky or Dink because his brother couldn’t pronounce Richard.
