NewPlew

From newscientist.com via digg:

Fathers: watch what you say. It seems dads may have more of an influence on their children’s language development than they might think.

Lynne Vernon-Feagans at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and her colleagues sat in on playtime with 92 families with dual incomes, observing how much each parent spoke to their child, the words and sentence structures they used, and the types of questions they asked.

Children whose father’s vocabulary was more varied when they were 2 years old had more advanced language skills at age 3. Surprisingly, the dads spoke less and asked fewer questions than the mothers, suggesting it was not how much they spoke but what they said and how they said it that resonated with their children.

I must hone my linguistic skills now so I may wield multisyllabic words as a defensive instrument against verbal monotony upon Zee’s arrival. The very fate of this child’s entry into gifted & talented classes may rest upon my choice of words.

Gosh, I sure do hope I learn to talk real good before Zee shows up. Ain’t no tellin’ what the kid will be like if I don’t speak no good!

WOW - I’ve never tried to use my in-laws’ version of the english language before. Its really quite disturbing. Thank god for college, mom, and a healthy appetite for 3-2-1 Contact as a child; I could’ve been using that Appalachian vernacular on a daily basis!

I can only imagine what my kid’s linguistic skills will be like:
Joanna: “What’s the matter honey, you don’t feel good?”
myKid: “No mom - I feel good. There is nothing wrong with my motor skills. However, I don’t feel well.”
Joanna: “You’ve been watching reruns of 3-2-1 Contact with your father again, haven’t you?”

There are some good times ahead.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 21st, 2006 at 1:11 am and is filed under Random stuff. You can follow responses to this entry from the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.