Child language development


Did you know that :

• Young children between birth and 6 months learn the meanings and uses of up to 14,000 words, an average of five new words each day (Smith, 1926; Templin, 1957; Anglin, 1993).
• Children production of new words is usually seen towards the end of the second year (Benedict, 1979; Goldfield & Reznick, 1990).
• Early research into children's ability to rapidly form associations between words and their meanings therefore focused on children aged between two and five years, an age described by Carey (1978) as a period of "word-learning wizardry".
• Anecdotal evidence suggesting that preschoolers sometimes acquire new words at home after hearing their parents speak them only once.
  
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=JCL&volumeId=32&issueId=01#

Wait, wait, I am not trying to make another research on language development. I just begin to understand why my 24 month son labels these people "wawa".

First, Fauziah from Malaysia. We saw her for the first time when we had sushi lunch with all my husband's friends. She came with a goodie bag for my son and instead of saying "thank you" to her, my son murmured "Wawa, wawa, wawa" . I thought those words are meaningless, but then I observed that my son consistently repeating the word in every encounter with Fauziah.

The second one, when we first met Azrina, a Malaysian, in front of our dorm Gumyoji, my son unhesitantly shook her hands and said ,'wawa'. ???.

Could it be that my son called everyone from Malaysia : wawa? No, no, no. Absolutely no. I mean, I forgot to tell you that I have a dear friend, Fia. She did not see us very often, but everytime we met ,I always introduced her to my son as ,"wawa'. The word actually stems from the word "ua" which means aunty in my mother tongue. It happens so that Fia's niece calls her 'wawa' and I guess it is easier to remember than 'aunty fia'. Want to have a look at her?

To Wisnu, the word 'wawa' represents a woman -- not necesarily from Malaysia--with a veil and gives him goody bag :p

Perhaps I should conduct one research on Psycholinguistics to explain this phenomena scientifically. :p:p .

Now I'm puzzled by the frequent use of word 'bis'. Whenever he saw a bus, he would say 'bis'. That does not worry me, as in Bahasa Indonesia we call bus 'bis'. However, if Wisnu saw a train, subway train or JR train, he would call it 'bis'. In addition to that, in Brainy Baby movie , he calls the string alphabet sets moving as 'bis'. Moreover, whenever he meets someone new, and the person tries to make a conversation with him, he would say 'bis' instead of looking at the person and responding to the greeting. Not only that, if he sits on his toy or any object but the chair, he will wave at me and shout,' ibu, bis, dadah..!'.

I am not a psycholinguist, but these things tickle me. Any comment?