I just went to look at a "Dolce words" list, 'cause it was being mentioned on another thread that has nothing to do with me. And I noticed something...

Ok, so most kids' first words are things like "mama" "dada" and stuff for wanting milk, right? I'd noticed before that DS started with what appeared to be "That" and a generalized noun "Dah," as well as "hi."

Looking at the Dolce word list, the words he uses regularly are overwhelmingly from the "12 most commonly used" and "20 most commonly used" list.

Anyone run into anything like this, and/or comments on interpretation?

Maybe all kids do this and people just don't re-enforce "is" as much as they do "dada?"

It just dawned on me that I have trouble with nouns, and spend a lot of time saying "That.... uhhhhh"

I wonder if his generalized noun is a mishearing of "That.... uuuuuuuhhhh"

Do you mean the Dolch sight words?

And if so, could you give an example other than "that" (which is, in my limited experience, a very common first word)? It must be very difficult for him to verbally communicate effectively without using nouns.

Maybe it's my ignorance here, but I'm confused. I thought the Dolch sight words were used as a list of words that do not follow the phonics system and is not a list of first words commonly used by babies. Am I wrong?

No, that's absolutely right. I think the OP is suggesting that it's odd that her baby says them.

I may be misunderstanding as well, but my understanding is that children generally begin talking by using nouns and only later progress to verbs. From what I know, a general term like "that" is fairly commonly used by young children to represent virtually everything until they learn the names for everything. Also, I believe that the Dolch sight words are listed in order of how often they appear in literature and that children's literature (in particular beginner readers) try to limit their content to mostly these most common words so that children will more easily develop a sense of mastery when reading. It makes sense to me that this list would be similar to the most commonly spoken words. IS that what you are asking about?

According to Nutureshock, the thing where babies tend to say nouns first has more to do with the English language than this being a general rule (because in English setences tend to end in verbs).

DD's first word was "up" and she's said quite a few verbs in both DH's native language and English. I think what your child is interested in also plays a huge roll AND how easy it is to say certain things, e.g., she picks the easiest words in our respective languages to say. I think mama and dada tend to come first just because they are easier to say.

And, I, in, that, the, to, at, and you are all words he uses quite a lot (the list was originally being discussed as a way to pick spelling words for poor spellers it has nothing do to with baby stuff, it's supposed to be a list of commonly used words divided by degree of commoness).

He also consistently says Mama, Hi, yes, and occasionally up and dada, and his generalized noun, a bunch of others from the dolce 12 an 20 lists, and then sometimes he'll come out with some word, used properly, which he rarely repeats. I'm probably missing something he says regularly.

Anyway, I was looking at the list for no particularly good reason, and I noticed the overlap. I think I've heard all of the "most" common words a couple of times, and a few of them seemed strange when I heard them. And I'd noticed that having a lot of "glue" words seemed a bit unusual, but didn't think about it much. Looking at the Dolce list just put a bunch of the ones I keep hearing all together and made me think about it. I hadn't clued in that those are COMMON words.

(he's not talking much yet, certainly not an "effective verbal communicator!" and he talks mostly in binges while we're out on walks or playing very intently.)

I suspect it's interest, seems that way with most kids I know. I know DS started saying "in" a lot when he started putting things in things constantly. He started saying hi when trying to get attention from people. He says Up when mama isn't working

I'm just interested in the pattern. I'm not looking for deep significance or anything. It occurred to me that I tend to re-enforce things like "the," "it" and "at," and I'm not sure most parents do, so I thought maybe that might be part of it...

A lot of those words also have a similar sound, (at, that, the) so maybe that's part of it.

And then there's the # of syllables thing. DS doesn't do a whole lot of two syllable words. When he does say dada, he often says "da" (pause) "da" (pause) "dad" (pause) "a."

"In" and "up" don't strike me as especially odd...but if he's using words like "and" and "the" and "at" I wonder how they can be meaningful when they are used without nouns? Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "re-enforce" in this context. I don't know what most parents do, but I didn't go around making a big deal out of any particular word when DD was a baby. I just talked to her. But then, she wasn't a terribly early talker.

It's a "just add gestures and stir" kinda thing

By re-enforce, I just mean I'll say "yeah, that's a flag, AND that's a flag" where I *think* most people would emphasize "yeah, those are FLAGS"

It is an interesting observation, and will be fun for you to follow as language develops further.

I have three kids, and none of them really followed normal pattern for development. We have a very strong family history of late-speaking (relative to other skills), so there seems to be a lot of room during the time frame to pick and choose what they are going to say. We all seem to have waited to speak until we were/are capable of full sentences. I have a sneaking suspicion that children who learn substantially differently from the norm in most other ways are also likely to learn language in an unorthodox manner.