Funny glitches

Time does fly! There has been a new boost in our little punk´s vocabulary and construction of sentences in the last 2 months. He uses appropriate terms in the appropriate occasion much more often and he has started to integrate corrections very quickly. He also relates one thing to another, based on previous events, which was less frequent before. Example: “Papi I just fell down LIKE THE MONKEYS” (we sing the song “5 little monkeys jumping on the bed”). He uses this “PAPI/MAMI! -something something-, LIKE -something related-…” structure very often. This occurs in Spanish more frequently than in English, as it´s expected, but transference and parallelisms between the two languages do occur a lot. He also tries to adapt English words into Spanish when he can´t find a Spanish word. The outcome is most of the time hilarious.

He also demands translations of Spanish songs into English and he finds this very amusing, which is a real mind cracker for Papi, who tries his best improvising direct translation that rhyme if possible… Then I have to remember what I just made up because he records it by heart and I know he´ll ask for the exact lyrics in English some other day (big challenge!).

He is more aware of what languages are. He identifies English and Spanish by its name, and we talk about speaking 2 languages and what people do and don´t speak them. I also play with him counting or saying different things in German (I´m far from proficient, just low intermediate), and he finds it really fun too.

Regarding correction strategy, we haven´t changed it along these 2 years. We continue to use a soft approach, that is to say we don´t stop him and say that he is wrong and the right way to say this is XXX… Instead of this we just let him speak and then use the word or expression after him reformulating the same structure or a similar one in the right way, and he understands most of the times immediately what needs to be corrected. Then next time that he uses the same structure he usually gets it right. I think this is because we instinctively use a different tone of voice and pace when we want to focus on something that needs to be corrected.

There are some persistent and very funny bugs that are being really hard to redirect though. For instance, he uses the verb “to give” / “dar” in Spanish in a really strange way. For some unknown reason he adds “TA” before it and then constructs all the grammatical structures placing that particle perfectly. “Te voy a TA dar este coche” / “Mamá me ha TA dado un coche”. Even though we use this verb very often, like in every language as I assume, he stubbornly does this even though we have used it in the right way a moment ago. It´s really funny because this particle doesn´t exist neither in Spanish nor in English, and neither we nor anybody that he has contact with, as far as we know, say that. There are some names also that just don´t go with him. “Víctor” is “Gitor” for him, and that makes conversations so fun.

He is well aware of contracted forms so the “TA” case doesn´t seem to be that he is confusing this with a particle. For example I usually say “I´m gonna give you…” and the like (wanna, gonna, etc, I just can´t help it) and he replies many times with “Papi IS GOING TO give me…”, so it´s clearly not the case. The particle thing happens more in Spanish than English, just as a curiosity.

I take these glitches as part of his development and maybe as a way to reaffirm his personality rather than a speech pathology, but just in case I´ll keep a close eye on this…

What funny glitches have your kids had along the early years? Do you try to correct them or you just go with the flow?