When a baby is growing up, especially the first-born, parents often make a commitment to write a diary in order to record the first teeth, the first steps, the first fever, the first syllables, the first words. It is certainly not only helpful for parents to maintain a diary, at least once a month, but it is also a joy to reread entries, and laugh and cry over your baby’s developmental milestones. Recording emergence of two or more languages is fascinating food for thought. It helps to make personal discoveries, clarify ideas and grow wisdom about raising children. If we listen carefully enough we begin to understand – or at least to tune in – to what our child is trying to communicate. Contrary to the expectation that she will use either one or the other language, or a mix of both, she is creating her own tongue.

Kids are great inventors – and we should enjoy their creativity. Words our granddaughter uses often have a very unusual degree of approximation and do not sound like anything in the languages she is exposed to.  She absorbs and understands what we say but prefers to use her own version of the names of favorite toys,  animals, friends and family members. We are sometimes trying to teach her the ‘correct pronunciation’: Let’s practice saying the name of your baby brother (whose name is Maxim), say ‘m-m-m-Maxim!’ She is eager to learn and responds happily: ‘m-m-m… Tapi!’ How did Maxim turn into Tapi?? We imagine a young man still going by the name ‘Tapi’, trying to explain its origin… We realize that our granddaughter will probably continue to invent words and stick to her own language until the need for clarity and complexity of speech can no longer be ignored, and her attempts to imitate become more successful.