My Grandson Colin (Re-) Invents the English Language

About a month ago I heard my Grandson Colin (age 2 1/2) utter a sentence that was something like "Colin Nana happy no." We immediately understood what he was saying: "Colin and Grandma are not happy." No one in the history of the world has uttered some of the sentences Colin uses, with his peculiar (and I mean peculiar) way of pronouncing them. He has never heard his parents, his grandparents, aunts, uncles, anyone utter some of these sentences in this way, with this peculiar syntax and this peculiar pronunciation.

What Colin is doing, and what every child does learning his or her native language, is inventing English--then reinventing it. Colin keeps reinventing it as he comes closer and closer to the language that adults around him are speaking.

This might seem to be a strange theory of language acquisition and development. But this is exactly what is done: We invent our native language.

Colin is now talking our ears off. We understand about 3/4 of what he is saying. Some of his most interesting language inventions are falling away. That's inevitable, but it does seem a bit of a shame. He is getting away from referring to himself in the 3rd person--"Colin," which he pronounces something like /a:li:/ using IPA approximations. Using our writing system you could write it something like "AH-lee," with the final vowel nasalized. He's now moving toward using the pronoun "I."

He is not using sign language gestures as much as he did (he used to consistently sign "more," "thank you," and "please"). He still uses the Spanish word "agua" for water (pronouncing it something like "AH-wah"). I taught him this word as a bit of a joke, but he persisted in using it. At one time one of his sentences would feature ASL signs, a Spanish word, and his version of English words, all pronounced in his non-standard (yet often understandable) way.

It has been so much fun to watch Colin's language develop. iIt's a little miracle--one that happens every day, all over the world.

p.s Just thought of another sentence he uttered a couple weeks ago: "Colin Nana Beep-beep." This means (and we understood it perfectly), "Colin wants Grandma to play trains (beep-beep) with him." To negate this, he would just add "no" at the end. That would mean "Colin does not want to play trains with Grandma."