(More) Fun With Language Acquisition

I posted awhile back about some fun we have had in our household as regards language acquisition.

Well, the fun continues.

After a rain, we will often find small frogs in our backyard pool. They will be clinging desperately to the concrete, in a well-intentioned attempt to keep themselves alive. The poor things.

Anyhoo. Kiddo was in the pool with us after one such rainy froggy afternoon and he was just fascinated with the tiny beings clinging so desperately for life. We took him over to the side of the pool and he would just peer at them, with the look of one who has just discovered the meaning of life.

We told him what these tiny desperate beings were.

"Look at the frog, sweetie! See the frog? What a tiny little frog!"

Then he grinned, looked at the frog, pointed at it, and said with emphasis:

"FUK!!"

You see, he hasn't quite the hang of the guttural "g" consonant. He also has trouble with his "r". The word "dog" usually sounds like "duck," but that's not quite so offensive-sounding as its amphibian counterpart.

He is displaying the properties of one learning a language. He is consistently producing the "-og" sound as "-uck."

Hubby and I have the hardest time not laughing when he does this. He gets so excited to see the frogs, and when he gets excited, he says whatever word over and over again. So we earnestly hope that our neighbors are not outside in their yards when our little boy sees the frogs.

"FUK! FUK! FUK!"

I recently learned that one of our local museums has a traveling frog exhibit. We very nearly took Kiddo to see it, but we changed our minds. There is just too much potential for embarrassment there. Imagine us trying to explain to some poor innocent bystanders that our son really truly is trying to say "frog."

Kids say the darndest things, don't they?