Friday, December 11, 2009

Words, Words, Words from Barbara Kingsolver

I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about her family's experience of moving to an old farm and eating only locally produced food, including food they grew themselves, for one year. I could never do this because every plant I touch dies, plus no way, no how am I giving up chocolate and coffee, even to save the world. But I completely related to the scene she describes of a walk with her daughter in April after a very dreary and depressing March.

"These flowers are gifts from a previous century, a previous dweller here--a tale, told in flowers, of one farm wife's fondness for beauty and this place. ...[T]he show begins modestly in April with her tiny Lenten roses, white-petaled snowdrops, and the wildish little daffodils called jonquils that have naturalized all over the grassy slopes. As Lily and I walked single file up the path to the greenhouse, I noticed these were up, poking their snub, yellow-tipped noses through a fringe of leaves.

"'Oh, Mama,' Lily cried, 'look what's about to bloom--the tranquils.'

"There went the last of the needles of ice around my heart, and I understood I'd be doomed to calling the jonquils tranquils for the rest of my days. Lily is my youngest. Maybe you know how these things go. In our family, those pink birds with the long necks are called flingmos because of how their real name was cutely jumbled by my brother's youngest child--and that was, yikes, twenty years ago."

In our house, we call backpacks packpacks, yellow lellow, pine needles pine noodles, and pianos pinanos. There are others that don't pop immediately to mind. If "you know how these things go," I invite you to share your family's child-induced linguistic fun in the comments.

13 comments:

  1. What a sweet story. My nephew coined the term "slimming" for "swimming." :)

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  2. Warberdies! I may have the spelling wrong, of course. The accent is on the "War". I'm tempted to leave you guessing what it means, but I'm not that cruel - strawberries!

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  3. Lillie (8) is also my youngest. Her older brothers, 18 and 13 both love what she used to call magazines--"mazagines'. We still call them that. What joy do the young ones bring us!
    Just last week she brought home the word 'earthquicks' for the term earthquakes. She corrected me as I corrected her telling me that earthquicks were when the earth moved quick. (They are studying soil, rocks, and the earth in science right now.) Of course she made sense.
    However, she now knows the correct pronunciation and it breaks my heart just a little that some of her innocence is gone....
    oh, and porcupine quills are 'porkys' and she's not the only kids I've heard say that!

    Ahhh Memory Lane!!!!

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  4. My son used to say "huptilcopters" and "plug it out" instead of unplug. Contractions were also a mystery where he'd say "No, I amn't" instead of "No, I'm not." He's almost 40 now, but I still remember his cute sayings.

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  5. Rory said "hostible" for hospital, "Brocolaca" for broccoli. I know there are more but I can't think of them now. Mac made up words that we never found out the meaning. The author of this blog came up with the very funny "notnee" for monkey when she was a child. Mom said it took a long time to figure out what on earth a notnee was. Rory also liked to misuse words properly pronounced, like the time she stated (at age 4) that there was an ambush waiting for me. I asked her hat an ambush was, and she stated "an ambush is an animal...more than a pig." I had no idea there were degrees of being an animal.

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  6. When I went to pick up my grandson from daycare one day, he excitedly grabbed my hand and pulled me over to see the "callipeters"--caterpillars to the rest of us. We then went home to eat "pasghetti" for supper.

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  7. My cousin called spiders, "bobbers". My younger son wants me to "Zo" things (sew) and he used to call ink, "yink". Miss those days - - -

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  8. Awww, thanks for sharing so many wonderful "words"! Lisa, I'd totally forgotten about notnees, and Rory is such a gem for these sorts of words. Like aunt, like niece, I guess!

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  10. Thanks for the great post...
    What a great way to remember all the cute things kids say that make our language more livable for everyone. My now 39yr old son used to call his favorite candy "Circus Peanuts" ... "Zirk Beans". Now it's my grands that give out the smiles. My DGS still calls me "Gamma Ancy".
    Nancy K in WI

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  11. Two of our family favorites are "sam-pinches and segunuff" -- sandwiches and 7-up -- and "eye grows" -- eye brows!

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  12. Isn't it funny how our kids words persist in the family dictionary! In our house the piano is a pan-ee-o, onions are yunyuns, and the nice man in the brown truck is the U-P-Pess man.

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  13. My daughter used to call freckles "markles" and my son still calls the trampoline a "jumpoline".
    Funny thing is, their words make more sense.

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Thanks so much for taking time to comment!