the 90th minute

Until September 2007, when my oldest daughter was born, this blog covered daily life and politics in Israel, as well as Hebrew-English linguistic issues, from the perspective of an American-raised journalist and translator living in Israel. Now it mostly serves as the SmunchMonk&Bear news agency, a portal into the bizarre universe of the little people. Read more at: www.shoshanakordova.com.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Does she talk yet?

People have been asking me a lot lately whether Rimonit is talking, so here is a list of whatever I can think of that she currently appears to say and understand. (Note: This does not include the stream of babbledygook that only RP understands.)

Says (notice this is in Hebrew and English):
Et ze (=this) (probably her most common words, though it took me a while to recognize that she was actually saying words and not just sounds, since we speak to her only in English - she obviously picked this up from maon)
More (mo)
Abba
Toda (da) (=thank you) (also picked up from maon, and also took us a while to figure out - but once I started looking at when she uses it, I saw that she pretty much reserves 'da' for when someone gives her something. at maon the ganenet says toda when she gives the kids something, which seems like a weird idea, but i guess it works, since she didn't pick this up at home)
Hello (aya)
(?) Bath (ba)
(?) Banana (ana)

Signs:
All done
Drink
Eat
Hello/bye-bye (=wave)

Understands:
Anything she says or signs plus:
Hands up (when I'm dressing/undressing her)
Legs
Nose
Head
Come
Out
Stop/wait
Bye-bye bath (the cue that bath time is about to end)
No
Don't touch
(?) Ima

She has also recently started getting interested in animals, and points and babbles excitedly to any birds, cats or dogs she sees. But she doesn't like when they come too close; a couple of times she's gotten upset when a dog started sniffing her.