The House of Grammar Part 2: Escape From the House of Grammar

The content of this post is entirely new. As a few of my readers may know, prior to yesterday's post there was a gap between posts of nearly three years.  In that time not only have I continued to be a homeowner, but D and I also conceived, gave birth to, and are now in the process of teaching language to, a small child.  On our way to daycare this morning I spent some time quizzing him on various colours and the thought came to me that it might be interesting to delve into the words and language he uses, as a way to better understand how language develops.
So without further introduction, I give you Liam's words.

Miam: His name.  He can't quite make the letter "L" yet.
Mommy: Every single woman he sees, including his actual mommy. If I were another man, this would make shopping for a new spouse remarkably simple.
Daddy: Almost every man he sees, though he has started to differentiate between me and other men. He now normally applies this to only tall, lanky men with short dark hair, and when he sees a picture of Zachary Levi.
Ack Ack: Bird. This is due to an error I made when educating him.  We were working on animal sounds, and given we have a lot of crows in the area I thought I'd teach him what a crow says.  At first he played a game with me where every time I asked him what a crow said, he would reply "Choo choo" and grin. Then he made a logical connection. Crows are birds, therefore all birds must be crows, therefore all birds must say "Ack Ack." Given the types of birds we mainly have in Halifax this is not entirely erroneous, since he mainly hears seagulls, crows, and bluejays, which all make very similar sounds. However, this will be a difficult logical fallacy to fix.
Dock dock: Hammer. Because of the sound the hammer makes.  He came up with this one entirely on his own.
Zoon Zoon: Anything that makes a loud mechanical whirring noise, like a vacuum or a blender. Also an expression of fear and distaste because he really does not like these things given how loud and surprising their sounds can be.
Water: Water, obviously.  However it has many uses.  Sometimes he uses it as a noun: "Look! Water!" It can also be used as an imperative sentence: "I want you to give me water!" Recently he has used it as an interrogative sentence: "Can I play in the water?"
Wan: I want. Used frequently.
Mo: This can mean either "Milk" or "More."  There are actually subtle differences in the pronunciation depending on which he means.  Mo said with more emphasis on the "M" and a sharp stop after the "o" means milk. Mo said with an elongated "o" sound means more.
Toneh: Thomas the train engine. Usually used in the imperative "I want to watch Thomas the train engine!" but occasionally as a simple noun, such as when he sees a picture of Thomas that he wants you to pay attention to.
Choo choo: Train, obviously. Usually combined with Wan: "Wan Choo Choo." Or, strangely, combined with Bunny as part of an interrogative sentence:"Bunny Choo Choo?" By which I think he is asking if our pet bunnies would like to play with his trains, because we sometimes let them out of their cages to hop around on the same mat his train set is set up on and he's made the connection.
Chooda: Cheerios. Also Susan, our daycare provider. It took me forever to realize he was asking if we were going to daycare, and I kept giving him cheerios he didn't want. "Chooda?" (daddy hands him a few cheerios) "No Chooda. Chooda?" (daddy looks confused)
On the Baat: On the bus. Can mean a variety of things.  Sometimes interrogative: "Are we going on the bus?" Sometimes declarative: "I'm on the bus." or "I've just put something in my toy bus." Occasionally he uses this to ask one of us to sing him "The Wheels on the Bus." before changing his mind and saying "No on the baat.  Choo choo!" By which he means he actually wants us to sing D's variant "The Wheels on the Train." (actually the same song, but with train inserted wherever bus would normally be applicable, which is a surprisingly difficult thing to remember to do, and he corrects you on it EVERY TIME.)
Rock: Used at bedtime, because D and I typically give him a rock and a song before bed.  Recently has been used to indicate his preference for who does so: "No daddy rock.  Mommy rock." This preference is rarely the opposite.
Cha: Chair. Rarely used as an actual noun. Normally only used as an imperative: "I want to sit in the chair." or a declarative "I'm sitting in the chair." Has recently been combined with "Rock" to make "rock cha" which he does use as a noun.
Poon: Spoon. I giggle every time he says it.
Boon: Balloon.
Bubbo: Bubbles, indicating he wants a bubble bath. Also Bottle. It depends on what emphasis he puts on the "u" which one he means.
Way: Multiple meanings. "You're in the way." or "Put this away." or "I would like to get the thing you just put away." or "I'm going to put this away."
Heeen: Horse. This is how he says "neigh".
Ssssssss: Snake. Took forever to teach him.
Pig: Actually means pig. He can't say "oink" so this is one of the few animals he calls by its actual name. This is also the word he uses instead of "oink" when you ask him what a pig says: "Pig pig!"
Hone: Home. Often used as part of an interrogative sentence: "Mommy, Daddy, Miam Hone?" by which he is asking if all three of us are going home.

While this is a big list of a lot of the words he uses, it's by no means comprehensive.  What I find interesting are some of the ways he combines some of them. "No all done mommy rock." for example would indicate that he's not ready for D to put him in his crib yet, and that he wants her to keep rocking him."Peter Daddy hone?" is actually him asking, "Did Peter's daddy take him home?" while "Hone Peter Daddy." would likely state "Peter's Daddy did not come to take him home." because in this case "Hone" is the location of "Peter's Daddy" and spoken in the context of Peter and his Daddy not being present would be a statement of a fact that occurred in the past.
Obviously the basic grammar is there, but trying to interpret his meaning from the structure of his statements is a challenge because with his limited vocabulary (most of it nouns), it is often the order of the words he uses or the emphasis he places on them that determines their significance. This makes sense, but it is like trying to communicate with someone of a different culture where there is no common linguistic background, because I am forced to listen without preconception and rely more on context rather than the words actually spoken, which is VERY DIFFICULT for someone like me.
 Watching and participating in this process is, however, a fascinating exercise, and a challenge that forces me to question my own preconceptions around how I use the English language. That's actually part of why I started The House of Grammar.

The House of Grammar Part 1: The House of Grammar

I recently started posting on Facebook some tongue in cheek grammar lessons which were fairly well received. Given limitations on facebook, I kept them relatively short. I plan over the next few days (or possibly weeks, depending on how lazy I am about it) to repost them here, possibly moving a few things around, stealing from one to add to another, etc.

However, I hope you enjoy them. Now to the House of Grammar: Part 1, where I explain several common grammaticological terms and their usage(s)(ing):


Preposition: The place you were before where you are now. Also, the state of mind you work yourself into before making a sexual advance.
Verb: To shake. As in "Verbration."
Adverb: An action word commonly seen on a billboard, like "save" or "experience" or "whiten."
Noun: The sound a cat makes when demanding something immediately.
Pronoun: A word that just sounds like it spent several years at school. Like "Metacarpus." Oh yeah. That noun's a pro.
Suffix: A county in England. Near Worcestershire.
Prefix: Something broken.
Participle: Someone who worships a group of people working together. See also Participant (an ant working as part of group) and Participate (Having finished a business lunch).
Subjunctive: How the fuck should I know?
Adjective: The goal of a promotional campaign.
Conjunction: Where fraudsters meet in the middle.
Clause: The beginning of a "slow clap."
Dependent Clause: When your child begins a "slow clap."
Independent Clause: When the child in your womb begins a "slow clap."
Tense: Used when camping.
Subject: To be thrown forcibly from a submarine that is currently underwater. See also "eject" (To be deleted from someone's facebook friends list).
Rhetorical: To speak like a popular character from "Gone with the Wind."
Article: A fragment of a painting, at the subatomic level.
Homophones: When only one of your earbuds is working but it looks silly to only put one of them in.
Anachronism: The process of reducing something into its component initials, thereby rendering it irrelevant.  Example: CSIS.
Onomatopoeia: A small dog experiencing difficulty with housebreaking.
Metaphor: Used when you meet someone to whom you've been introduced already. Example: "Hi! I'm Bob!" "Hi Bob, we've metaphor."
Simile: A comparison using like or as. Used primarily by teenagers. See the movie "Clueless" for reference.
Compound Sentence: Being imprisoned by Mormons.
Direct Object: Something that comes right out and says it. A corvette, for example, says "I have a small penis."
Euphemism: You know what I mean?
Diatyposis: A rare and poisonous Australian mammal.
Hyperbole: The trunk of a tree that has been fed far too much sugar and refuses to nap.

Helpful? Insightful? Infuriating? Allegorical? Probably not the last one.

Grey Hairs, and the Things That Cause Them

This morning D made us a nice breakfast of french toast and sausage. Okay, the sausage had been cooked the day before, but the french toast was fresh and excellent. We were sitting there happily masticating when suddenly I cocked my head at a sound the bunnies were making, turned back to look at D and saw a look of unabashed glee on her face. She grinned impishly at me, gestured, and announced happily "You're going grey!"

Gee, thanks.

The woman rushed to the washroom, grabbed her tweezers, and plucked out the offending hair to show me. And the one beside it. I think she was making room for more grey hairs, so that she wouldn't be alone in aging. I fully expect to wake up some day to find her plucking hairs on my head in order to promote the advance of grey onto my scalp.

At least now when people point out the male pattern baldness that's also creeping its way onto my head, I can justify it by pointing out the grey hair as well.

I have reasons for going grey, however. I think this blog itself stands as testiment to one of the main reason; a short, maniacal reason that plagues me daily, but to whom I am shackled. There are other reasons.

One of our big stresses at the moment is attempting to rid ourselves of our apartment. We had to close very quickly on our new home and were unfortunately still in lease for our apartment, a lease from which it is proving extremely difficult to extricate ourselves. We've resorted to posting ads on Kijiji, and we get lots of replies to these ads, but so far no one has actually taken the damnable thing off our hands.

Many of the replies cause me considerable anguish. I've taken care to state quite specifically several points. Firstly, the rent includes heat and water. No pets are allowed. The apartment is available immediately. The apartment is located close to Bayers and Connaught. These are the sorts of replies I mainly get:

"Is this apartment still available?"
"Pets allowed? Y/N?"
"Where is the apartment?"
"I have a cat. Is this okay?"
"When is the apartment available?"
"Can you tell me where the apartment is?"
"What's included in the rent?"
"Does the rent include power? Heat?"
"I was wondering about the apartment."

The last one's my goddamned favourite. I cleaned up the grammar a bit to make the responder not sound like such a complete and total moron, but I have to ask: WHAT were you wondering about the apartment? Did you want to know if it's green, or inhabited by magical fairy bugbears who will give you cookies if you learn how to dance? Can you host key parties and invite your drunken leprous biker friends? TELL ME!!! It's like human beings have lost the capacity to read whole sentences. They see I have an ad, that it's for a two bedroom apartment, and read no further. Is it that difficult to go over the whole text of the ad? In its entirety it is shorter than this paragraph has been!

I weep for these people. It must be difficult for them to get through life. It goes some way to explaining Haligonian drivers, though. They see the big red octagonal sign in front of them, try to read it, get tired after "STO" and figure whatever it says it can't possibly apply to them and so drive right on through. They even seem to have trouble reading the colours of street lights, as though they can't be bothered to investigate anything that's flashy and colourful that won't also help them increase their penis size (although, to be fair to these people, they probably read "increase their pen" and think "Yeah, mine's running outta ink; why not?")

I'm also concerned about the kids across the street. The ones who appear to have passed puberty but haven't quite hit the stage of not-being-assholes. There's quite a large cluster of them, and they gather right at the entrance to the public housing across from us on their bikes like an imitation biker gang, yelling loudly into the night and wrecking any street signs that come within reach. I wonder if they walk around all day swinging their arms, and the moment they touch something solid decide that it needs to be vandalized in some way. If I can give them any kudos, it would be that they seem to be racially inclusive, so as a gang of misfits they are very accepting. Fantastic. Now we can have hope that in the future, people of all colours and shapes can get together in harmony to smash beer bottles and set off firecrackers that detonate like car bombs in the early morning hours.

The young boy who lives in the house behind us just got his first bike and is learning to ride it with training wheels. I wonder if his parents have made a mistake. The jackals across the street probably see him as a future member. Their only requirement appears to be the ability to not fall off a bike, and it's not a particularly strict requirement anyway.

My lawn continues to grow. At this point it's claimed our patio set. I can still see the top of the table, but had to dig to find one of the chairs. Halifax weather is uncooperative when it comes to lawn mowing. We haven't seen the sun for a week and a half.

D just told me the other day there could be earwigs in our laundry, after having hung it up to "dry" in the rain.

I think a few grey hairs are just the beginning.