Saturday, July 16, 2011

Children's vocabulary - to correct or not to correct?


I'm afraid I am a bit of a pain when it comes to words. I take issue with poor use of the English language and incorrect punctuation - you know, those signs you see with commas in all the wrong places, or the wrong type of 'there' or 'where' used in an email. Gah. It makes me cross.

Anyway, all of this goes totally out of the window when it comes to my children. They have invented some fabulous words of their own and I just can't bring myself to correct them.

For example, among many others, my three-and-a-half year old currently refers to things being 'benear' something (which is a hybrid of 'beside' and 'near') and he has a fabulous word 'impressful' which is, well, for anything really good or - impressful!

I also realised only recently that my five-year-old says 'thuge' for 'huge' and then yesterday he thought I'd told him I'd been to see the 'Food Fighters' at a music festival.

All of which are just so much more brilliant and entertaining than the proper versions - so I don't correct them, for the time being at least, and wonder what other parents do when their children mix words up, or make up new words entirely? Do you correct them - should we correct - or is it OK to enjoy the innocence of childhood while it lasts and tell them, when they are twelve, that there isn't actually such a word as 'benear' which might explain why they didn't do so well in their test at school and - while we're at it - that Santa isn't real.

What do you think?

Source: http://hotcrossmum.blogspot.com/2011/07/childrens-vocabulary-to-correct-or-not.html

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