Yes

For an introduction to Five Minute Friday, click here.

This week's one-word prompt is: Yes

Ready?

GO.

Yes is an interesting word.  Here's my stream-of-consciousness on it: I've been thinking a lot lately about language learning as Caroline and I are both learning a language at the same time!  I'm studying Russian, and she is learning English.  There are many similarities to how we're learning these languages - we build a base vocabulary based off of high-frequency and easy-to-understand words that we hear and see in the world around us.  We generally don't pronounce things right at first (proud to say Caroline must have a bit of Caribbean in her as she drops the end sound off of all her words :).  We can slowly build vocabulary by listening to a sentence, identifying the words we know, and filling in the gaps for what we don't with context clues.

Caroline is very bright and already knows over 60 words at 18 months (words she can consistently say; she can recognize probably 20 more but just can't say them yet).  It's been interesting to see the order of the words she learns.  Dada (now Daddy) was first, bye-bye, ka-ka (now Kitty), ball, hi etc.  Truck and bus suprised me next, but we see them a lot and she likes how loud they are so that makes sense.  Momma came a little later (but so glad to hear her say it), and now she rushes through more complicated words like "helicopter" and "butterfly," coming out something like "lacacopter" and "mmmfly!"  

But she still hasn't said "Yes."  OK, she says "Yeah."  And she definitely has been saying "No" for awhile.  I suppose we just don't say the word "Yes" that often at home - we're pretty informal, and I'm teaching her other awful things in addition to "Yeah" like "where's your toes!?" instead of "where are your toes!?"  I wonder when I got so slack about saying "Yes."  I was taught growing up that it was "Yes or Yes Sir/Ma'am" and NEVER "Yeah."  Need to try to get back to that before we get to an age where eye-rolling comes along with "Yeah."

Picture of the week!  The first time she really sat still to pose for me.  Love it.