"Bye-de-ball"

It turns out that basketball and bicycle can be the same word. This is so for Austin, who is devouring language these days. He first learned to say "bye" for bike and "ba" for book. In recent weeks he has been practicing his hard "k" sounds. He is a bit like a rabbi as he says "bookkkkk" now, exaggerating the "k" with a good dose of Yiddish phlegm.

Of course, we knew he would be a talker when he started saying "Jeter bad boy" at 12 months. But now, it's so exciting to see him want to communicate everything in words. He isn't quite ready to speak in sentences, but wants to. This funny little Tolkien-esque language comes from his lips interspersed with words he can say. "Mama, que que mew mew bye de ball" I can't really do the phonetics justice, but I suspect he is asking me if I would like to join him in a pick up basketball game or perhaps a bike ride.

He repeats words almost instantly, although the words he decides to repeat vary. Hayden was trying to get him to say "yellow flower," because we just started working on colors, but he didn't. But then he seems to have gotten animal noises down, peering at his spoon with a cow on it he suddenly said, "moo moo." We decided to have fun and teach him "cheers," which he loves to do and especially associates it with his dad.

So, at first we thought, "bye de ball" meant basketball for the hoop he acquired this summer and sure enough he says "bye de ball" when he sees the hoop or if he catches a glimpse of a basketball on ESPN. But he also uses it repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly, whenever he spots a bike and so we realized that "bye" for bike had been replaced with his preferred, "bye de ball," or "bicycle." Every bicycle that goes by is greeted with "bye de ball," including motorcycles and really anything with wheels.

I read an article about a linguist who recorded his child's language as it emerged and has a lovely time lapse film that shows the evolution. Sounds cool, and it has been enjoyable to watch Austin's language rapidly progress. But who has the time for time lapse? Consider this my anthropological and linguistic short cut!