"Kaya!" (eighteen months old)

Now that Samuel's a year and a half old, he talks—he’s been warming up to it for a few months now, but over the past few weeks he's started to babble more fluently, say more recognizable words, and imitate every sound he hears (birds chirping, car horns beeping, Daddy snoring, etc.).

Most of Samuel’s words can be identified as being English, Spanish, or something in between. (To ask for a drink, he originally said “wawa,” which would be something between “water” and “agua”; now he’s opted for a clear Spanish “agua” pronunciation.) However, he has a couple of words he seems to have come up with on his own. The most popular at the moment is “kaya” (pronounced like “kayak” without the final k.) It’s used to mean motorcycle, bicycle, or tricycle, and is almost always said with great enthusiasm, because those are things Samuel just can’t get enough of.

So when Saúl took Sam with him to the mechanic's shop, where there were a variety of vehicles waiting for service, it was a very good day for our son. Here are some of the day’s experiences:

"Kaya!"

"Bah!" (For Samuel, this word is for buses or trucks.)

"Cah!" (car)

Driving's a tough job...

...but somebody's gotta do it!

So why “kaya”? I assume Samuel hears the hard c sound at the end of those three words ("motorcycle") and the i sound at the beginning of “bicycle,” and “tricycle”; he simply pronounces them in inverted order. Maybe the similarity in sounds, as well as the similarities in appearance, led him to the conclusion that these three belong to the same category of vehicles. Whatever the case may be, he’s made that word his own and pronounces it with varying degrees of enthusiasm (to mean, “I saw a kaya!”) or urgency (to mean, “I want to touch that kaya!”) whenever we go out on the street. He also uses it as a question—“Kaya?”—to confirm whether the sound he just heard through the window was a motorcycle going by. So kaya functions as both a noun and a verb, and can be used to form statements, exclamations, and questions.

I guess what I’m trying to get at in this blog entry is how amazing it is that at a certain age, without taking classes or having to study grammar and vocabulary, young children learn a language (in Samuel’s case, two languages). By listening and imitating, by making guesses about meaning and then trying them out, Sam’s taking part in a quiet miracle, like most children around the eighteen-month mark: he’s learning to use words to describe and affect the world around him.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 

your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:14)