Language

Some of you have asked about Tabitha's language acquisition. Here she is enjoying a 'gaw-girt'. Really it amazes us how quickly she is picking things up. We rarely talk to her in Spanish - we leave that to the Mexicans whose accent and grammar is much better than ours! Sometimes though we get a faster response if we do. For example she's much more obedient if we tell her to come in Spanish...though sometimes she just returns the commend to us accompanied by the appropriate Mexican hand signal (beckoning with all four fingers pointed downward). Her Tias Margaret and Robin told us that she was out in their yard calling their cat Bugeera last week. Bugeera wisely ignored both the hand signaling and the, "Ven, Ba-gee-ya!"
Her baby babble seems different at the weekend when she has been surrounded by Spanish. She amuses the folks at church by saying the occasional Spanish word. Last week one of the ladies arrived with bread on Sunday morning for Tabitha who had learnt how to say it in Spanish the day before. Yesterday she amazed me when someone went to take a tambourine off her and she said, "Mio!" or "Mine!" in Spanish. Thankfully she doesn't know that in English yet. "No!" is the same in both languages but whatever way we say it we get a negative reaction!

There is no doubt that Tabitha's understanding of both languages is developing. English seems to have the lead (which is quite fine with us!) at the moment but it seems that she knows words in either one language or the other. I haven't heard her say the same thing in both languages yet.

Besides her growing vocabulary she has quite a few animal noises and actions committed to memory. We're struggling ourselves to come up with new ones to keep her amused. She loves to impress (or to act like she has no idea what we're talking about!).

Praise God with us for her generally happy disposition and pray for wisdom as we seek to honour God in our parenting. Hopefully soon we'll shoot some video so you can see her in action (though it will probably be on her own blog which you can access from the link on the right-hand-side of this page).