Miss Mispronounce

This is such a hilarious age with Morgan. It's fun to see her use words, especially ones that she mispronounces or uses in the wrong context.

Earlier this week, Morgan crawled into bed with me and Dan and told us a story about a man whose "head nobbled". You really need to say the word "nobbled" out loud to get the full effect of the words; it's a funny combination of letters and, to my knowledge, not a real word. Anyway, Dan and I smirked at our daughter and asked her what she meant by "nobbled". Morgan said, "His head nobbled. Like this." And she nodded her head. Dan laughed, "Oh, you mean NODDED. His head NODDED." She still maintains that his head nobbled, but it was a funny start to the day.

Additionally, she has a terrible time trying to say the word "ask". She says it in a ghetto-like fashion: "ax". Her stories are a funny combination of made-up words and mispronounced ones: "...And then the man said 'yes' and nobbled his head. Then he axed another question."

I marvel really at the way that children are able to speak correctly at all. Considering that most kiddos start the morning off with a good dose of Elmo, it's amazing that they don't refer to themself in the third person all the time. "Elmo wants to play ball. Elmo wants to read email. Elmo wants to be your friend." Grrrr. Does Elmo want to take it outside?

This pronounciation quandry is not limited to children. Just yesterday I reached for my favorite Costco bag of Nestle Chocolate Chips and found an interesting spelling of a product. The "Ziploc-ish" zipper that used to appear on the end of the bag for easy access now appears on the inside of the bag. It's hard to explain, but basically they changed the position of the zipper to the inside so they can now rename it "Inno-Lok". Apparently Elmer Fudd is on the board for "Inno-Lok" because It sounds an awful lot like a person with a lisp trying to say "Inner Lock". I hope I'm never in a meeting where I'm needed for designing something for "Inno-Lok". I might ask the CEO where the "wascally wabbit" is.

For now, I jest. But in a few years when my little girl goes to school and starts misspelling and mispronouncing words, you can bet your Tickle-Me-Elmo I'm going to retaliate.