[basiacat]

that’s not………. how child speech works…………………………………………..

[basiacat]

god okay in an attempt to be less of an asshole, here’s how child speech DOES work (or tend to work, at least)

• kids tend to hypercorrect — this means that they tend to say things like “sleeped” instead of “slept,” “writed” instead of “wrote,” “goed” instead of “went,” etc
• kids tend not to make errors such as omitting verbs (“i hungry”)
• kids also tend not to make errors in the i/me, she/her department (“me am hungry”)
• simplification of difficult sounds — consonant clusters especially, so things like st, sp, ps, etc., as well as f, v, th-sounds, ch-sounds, etc.
• “babbling”-type utterances (“apwen” for “airplane,” using one babbly word for multiple objects, things like that) generally occur in children under the age of three and a half
• say it with me: an eight-year-old child is not going to be saying “me hungwy”
• do not confuse child speech with stereotypical learner english mistakes, that’s not only incorrect but also gross on the stereotypical learner english front (“me love you long time,” anybody?)
• if you’re going to write kidfic please do some goddamn research

[prokopetz]

Totally. It can be helpful to remind yourself that young children tend to speak as though the English language actually made sense. Our brains are pattern-recognising machines: children are really, really good at puzzling out the implicit rules of the English language, but they don’t necessarily know all the silly exceptions and bizarre edge cases that break those rules yet - those can only be learned through experience and rote memorisation.

Basically, when children who speak English as a first language make mistakes, it typically reflects a tendency to treat English as more grammatically, syntactically, and/or orthographically consistent than it really is. In some cases, this can be compounded by the fact that some kids will get offended at how little sense “proper” English makes, and insist upon using the more consistent forms even though they know very well that they’re technically “wrong”.

[idiagroena]

for a long young portion of my life I insisted on pronouncing Sean “SEEN” because that’s how it’s spelled.

[petermorwood]

Warning: the following reblog contains language and suggestive pronunciation  which may be unsuitable for those with loose tonsils.

“…I insisted on pronouncing Sean “SEEN” because that’s how it’s spelled.”

SteVen was no problem for me, the V was obvious, though long afterwards Mum told @dduane that I’d wanted to know why it wasn’t spelt Steeven because of the different ‘e’ sounds (I was that sort of child; D is amazed I survived.)

But for ages I was convinced that StePHen was pronounced…

…and even now I remember being annoyed when I was told otherwise. If PH could be F (fone, fotograf) how could it also be V? Nobody said vone or votograv, at least not where I lived.

What they did say was “lough”, meaning lake. It’s spelt “loch” in Scotland and pronounced lock, but not in Northern Ireland, where GH can be F (cough / cof), but also become a back-of-the-throat noise like the wind-up to a good spit.

So childish voices gargle happily through Logghh Erne, Logghh Derg, Belfast Logghh and Strangford Logghh, and they’ve got a handle on that GH. Until they see Lough Neagh…

…which isn’t Logghh Kneeagghh but Logghh Nay (in County Armaaa, not Armagghh)…

What happened to the GH?

It went here: this village in County Antrim is spelt Ahoghill…

…which can be pronounced uh-haw-hul, but someone with a heavy Ulster accent, a combat-trained glottis and a bit of humorous effort can make it sound like ogghh-hogghh-ull, which is a small tractor engine turning over and failing to catch.

Explaining the reasons for all this to a precocious six-year-old got, I was told, the sort of look that says “You’re making this up to annoy me.“ (Yup, it’s a wonder I survived…)