The Wonder of Language

It's been really fun to watch how quickly Dylan is learning about letters and words. He identifies letters all over the house, on labels and boxes, etc., and sounds them out. Lately, he will say something like, "Hey, Mom, what does A-B-I-T-G spell?"

"Uh, nothing..."

"Oh. Well, what does P-V-R-J-I spell?"

"Nothing..."

He thinks that, if he puts random letters together, it will automatically spell something. The other day, he kept trying to write "words" by putting random letters together:

After each "word" was written, he'd come to me and say, "So... what does this say?" And I'd say, "Nothing." Finally, I sat him down and said, "Dylan, you can't put random letters together and expect them to make a word. That's just not how it works."



So then he got an idea - he would copy "real" words off of stuff in our house. This:

is from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, one of Dylan's favorite books:

P.S. Nat wrote the cutest post about Voom on her blog last February. You should go check it out.

This is the name of our microwave:

Not sure where he got this from:

Or this:

Boy, was he pleased that he was actually writing "real" words.



Last night, Dylan goes, "Dad, what does S-O-N-Y spell?" And Ben was totally not paying any attention, so Dylan, of course, repeated himself louder: "DAD, WHAT DOES S-O-N-Y SPELL???"



Ben still didn't pay attention; he was watching stupid Family Guy (which should be called Blasphemy Central. I hate that show. I tell Ben that, one of these days, he is going to get struck by lightning while watching it). Because Ben wasn't paying attention, he figured that Dylan was spelling some random word, as usual, so Ben yells, "DYLAN, I'M SO SICK OF THIS!!! JUST BECAUSE YOU PUT LETTERS TOGETHER DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE MAKING A WORD!!!!"



I quietly put down the dish I was drying, walked into the living room, and said, "Ben, he was spelling 'Sony.' He must have gotten it off the DVD player."



Ben: "Oh."