typical early words for babies and toddlers in your language

[dustthouart]

From both my (admittedly introductory) study of linguistics and my own experience with my 14 month old, it seems that the early words of children are guided chiefly by #1 what the children themselves find most urgent and interesting to communicate, #2 what their unskilled and immature muscles find possible to form, and #3 starting with nouns and

Comments

[pickledginger]

First and early words in English often include Mama, Dada or Papa, baba (for bottle), wawa (for water), and similar constructions. But I have a niece who, while her mother and father were engaged in unhealthy first-word competition (say Mama, honey: ma-ma! / come on, sweetie, say Dada!), threw convention out the window and clearly exclaimed -- as she watched a kids' show.on TV during a family gathering -- "doggie!!"

[ti_ana]

"Doggie" was one of my nephew's first words as well. My brother has a French Bulldog who my nephew adores, so it was natural, I suppose!

[pickledginger]

They didn't have a dog ... yet.

[pickledginger]

:-)
My sister's family didn't have a dog at the time -- her husband doesn't like them -- but as you can imagine, that has changed.

My niece kept asking for a doggie; he kept saying she wasn't old enough. She kept asking how old was old enough; eventually, when she was I think about a year and a half old*, he told her, "when you're five." (He figured she'd forget. Hah!) So for the next three and a half years, instead of asking for a doggie, she talked about what kind of doggie she would get when she was five.

They ended up with a very well-behaved and much-beloved Yorkie.

(*Yes, she was all about being verbal, and started speaking very young.)

[reading_angel]

I've heard that children who are raised bilingually(or multilingually) typically take a bit longer to begin forming full sentences in any language because they have multiple codes to figure out, which may be something to keep in mind. Your daughter communicates to you what she needs, I wouldn't worry too much about which language she is using or view her choices for which words go with which language as typical of a child that speaks only English or only Mandarin.

I've also heard that bilingual children are much better at navigating changing circumstances because they learn to quickly switch between languages which is a skill they are able to apply to other things.

[dustthouart]

You don't think that a language in which "dog" is one syllable will have more children use it as one of their first languages than a language in which "dog" is three syllables, as in the first commenter? My first word was dog too, and it was one of my daughter's first.

Specifically I'm keen to know whether in languages where "milk" is easier to pronounce (actually Mandarin is one of these, it's "nai") if it crops up much earlier than in languages where "milk" is harder to pronounce. The MILK sign is very easy to produce (simply squeeze the hand) and I think that's why it's one of the first signs most babies make.

Everything I've read about sign language in babies says that babies find it much easier to produce sign than to produce spoken words, so why shouldn't it be easier to produce some words in some languages than in other languages? I'm assuming that babies raised in every language have equal cravings for milk. :)

[di_glossia]

http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~babylab/pdfs/Tardifetal2008.pdf
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=274835

Personally, I think it has far more to do with the culture a child is raised in than anything else. If dogs are kept around the house or are common pets in a certain culture, "dog" will be constantly repeated. If dogs aren't, it doesn't matter how many or how few syllables "dog" has, the child is highly unlikely to have it as a first word. Words like "Mama" and "Dada" are going to be repeated because parents have a strong desire to hear their children say those words. Repetitive words are highly likely to be babble that a parent mistakenly believes to have meaning.

[sayga]

I agree. "Flower" isn't a word that is easy to produce, but at about 16 months, my second daughter was trying to say it. She used reduplication and substituation and came up with raw-raw for flower. Her name for her sister, Kira, was Caca (lol). And she LOVED seeing butterflies and would only call them "buh!" (Same as book, bug, and bird, but she would sign something along with each of those to clarify which buh she meant). Kids have "coping mechanisms" to make sure they can express themselves even if they can't form the word perfectly at first.

Even in sign, 2 handed signs often became one handed with my kids, and 2 part signs often became a reduplicated "syllable." It might be longer before the pronunciation/execution is PERECT, but I don't think the word would come later simply because it's more difficult.

[iddewes]

My first word was hello. I was an aupair many years ago in France and the child I was mostly looking after was 2 but his speaking was behind - I can say at least with this child Mama and Papa were the main words he knew, he could also manage 'non' and attempted 'bateau' (the family lived on an island in the Seine and barges went past all the time) - but usually said 'ba-hmm'. I also did teach him to say 'dog' as that was easier for him than 'chien'. ;) So I think in terms of sounds he was able to come up with it is pretty similar to most English speaking children.

[provencepuss]

basic developmental phonetic linguistics...babies mouths makes sucking movements...lips together - m m m m become mama - and surprise surprise many languages have a variation n that for 'mother' OR p p p p and daddy thinks baby's first word was for him!
tongue against alveolal ridge (behind the upper teeth) is the closed vaccum to suck...leads to t t t t or d d d d and guess what. dadadad!!!!!

signing would reinforce this - the hearing person says 'oh s/he said mama' the non-hearing person then signs mama and baby imitates.
that's how we learn all our first languages - imitating the reinforced interpretaion of our first sounds

[zireael07]

Yeah, I've heard that theory explaining the mama/papa similarity in most languages....

[trccnts]

Both in spanish and catalan typical first words are: mamá, papá, agua/aigua (water), da/dona (give me). Gos (catalan) is usually a first word but not in Spanish (perro) I guess because of the strong R.
I was raised as bilingual and I still remember not really understanding the concept that catalan and spanish where not the same language and that there where people who couldn't understand both and I spoke a mix depending on where I learned the word or concept, so I would not worry about your daughter usage of the three languages she's learning.