Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Made-up words

My 2.5 year old loves to use made up words. The way he is using them it is clear that he knows they are made up, and he thinks it is very funny. Usually he uses them as a noun, occationally he uses them as verbs. He always adds -ing to them if they are a verb.

It doesn't worry me at all, I just wondered if anyone else does this. It is very cute!

DD8 did this all the time when she was that age. She had her own language practically. she had a speech delay and we had to work to get her to use real language and not her made up language. she had her own name for everything. It was neat but she also had articulation problems so the combination of that and "anna language" (as we all called it in the house) made it so people couldn't understand 90% of what she was saying.

She didn't seem to mind.

She was out of speech therapy by gr K. She is still very imaginative and plays with language and words a lot.

My son still makes up words at 14, and he makes up stories and poetry to go with them. I think some of my favorites of his made-up words when he was small were "Brasparagus" and "Gollyflower", two imaginary vegetables he invented and would request in restaurants when he was three. "Brasparagus" was a cross between broccoli and asparagus that tasted like asparagus but looked somewhat like broccoli: a single stalk with lots of tender tips. "Gollyflower" was a cross between butterflies and cauliflower: it tasted like cauliflower, but instead of being a boring solid white, it had the colors and patterns of butterfly wings. You had to be careful not to eat too much of it or you would get butterflies in your stomach!

Cute! I'll have to think back to if we had any really fun made up words.

The only one I can clearly remember is swindy. We moved to an extremely (and I mean extremely, too windy for a kite most of the time it seems) town and he decided super windy should be swindy since it was always super windy!

I coppied a post I wrote to my blog 2.5 years ago when my daughter was 3....Here it is!

S*** frequently makes up adjectives. She said that she couldn't eat the skin on her chicken because it was blobbery. She uses this word all the time. She once used it to describe a woman's eyeball who was displeased with her at Ted's, but that's another story. Today, she started to eat a slice of provolone cheese, but got interrupted (building towers). When she came back to her cheese, the sides were dry....."Mommy - Mommy - I need another piece of cheese because the sides are all Russally. See, they are all russally. Silly girl...

"I can't 'standle' it" was a funny accident often used.

My now 20 year old daughter made up the word mimicate (mix between imitate and mimic) - as in "stop mimicating me". We still use it - the younger ones probably think it's a real word!!

Then 18 month old would say..."I put my cup right there, benext to Mommy!"

That takes me back. I don't remember DS's made-up words being etymologically interesting like most of those mentioned here - his were apparently random sequences of phonemes. He'd tell me what one meant, and then expect me to remember two days later!

Yes, CollinsMum, my DS does that too. It's nice to hear of others doing the same.