Jiji said something else funny the other day...
We were riding the bus on the way to his weekly swimming lesson, and he started talking:
"In the world we have a lot of questions that we can ask scientists. Like, how did trees grow before there were people? What, did monkeys plant them or something?" :)
He did have a point though, because when I told him that the trees just grow naturally from the seeds of other trees, he asked, "But what about the VERY first tree?"
The other day when I was posting about funny things he said during the last year, I forgot to mention that recently he has sometimes been using English that sounds like an adventure story or something. I don't know if this is because a lot of his English input is now coming from books and movies, not from other kids, since he speaks Japanese at school. Anyway... for example, my husband got him a new bronze-colored thermos a few months ago. Later Jiji referred to it as "My golden flask". Another time I asked him, "Can you watch my bag for me while I go to the bathroom?" -- he said, "I am the guardian of the bag." And another time he found two dead woodlice (potato bugs? fake roly polies? warajimushi? Anyway, they were those fake roly poly bugs that can't roll up), under a floor-sofa in our house. He said they were "travellers in the house of death." Really looking at things from the bugs' point of view!!
5 comments:
That's brilliant - he's got a lovely imagination. May he keep it forever....
Yoshi a few weeks ago, when I was raging about the state of his room, and tidying up crashily, breaking up his Lego town in the process (because I had asked and nagged and threatened and begged.... you get the picture!) stood watching me and yelled, "Why do you have to VANQUISH my city???" Even in the throes of great crossness I had to admire his vocab!!
Vicky - that's so cute! I love it when these great words get used in normal conversation. I remembered another one just now (learned from a book by younger son, so his pronunciation was cutely wrong). Our dog Toby was very near the wheels of the computer chair, and Jiji called out to me, "Mommy, watch out! Toby's in peRILL!" (accent on the 2nd syllable). Ever since then I took to saying it too... "So&so's in peRILL!" The pronunciation is so funny too, but I just love the way "in peril" sounds so dramatic (like vanquish).
That is so cool-- I wish more people spoke like that, especially small children. You should be sure to collect all his poetic phrasings in a notebook, because I (at least) already want to hear more.
What a great imagination he has,
it must be hilarious listening to him come out with these things.
I found this hilarious. We lived in Germany/Hungary for 12 yrs. We're native English speakers, but my kids went to Hungarian schools, and my son's first written language was Hungarian. The only English they had was from me, their Dad's house, and reading books - lots of the books were British English, and they were big into fantasy books.
My daughter, now 21, with a huge vocabulary, STILL has words that she has only read, and not heard, and she'll come up with some funky pronunciations. It's become somewhat of a family joke.
Anyway, I read this to my son, now 16, thinking he could relate, and he actually LOL'd.
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