Leah's language

It's a little too soon for Leah to pick up a Scottish accent, but I do notice that some of her intonation is changing a bit after spending time in nursery (I still call it school, and pronounce "skew-el" like a true Midwesterner, but I'm the only one. ) Leah's teachers say "nar-sarrry" with a rolling r sound that I still can't make, and they don't use any article in front of the word...similar to the way the British refer to a trip to the hospital: "he was taken to hospital."

Yesterday, when I picked Leah up the teachers informed me that she had lasagna for lunch, but they said it in such a way that I had a hard time picking up the actual word. On the way home, I tried to get Leah to repeat the word in the hopes that she would use the same pronunciation, but at first she forgot completely what had been served, then when she remembered, she said, "Oh, lunch was za-zan-ya!" I'm sure that's not what they said, so I moved on.

I do see her put a bit of a British inflection at the end of a question, so the question kind of curves around at the end in a different way than it does in an American accent, if that makes sense. She's also starting to pronounce some words in a slightly different way as a result of being around her teachers and the other kids. Her "no" is much longer and more drawn out now, and includes almost every vowel available, like "naiou." Her yes is the same, but I'm assuming that might change since most of the kids actually use the word "aye" as an affirmative instead. There's a little girl in her class named Orlaith that is very kind to Leah, and I always make a point of going up to her at drop-off to ask her simple questions just so I can hear her say, "Oh, aye! aye!" in her wee Scottish accent.

Since her nursery is on a farm, a lot of the stories she tells about being there revolve around what she called "aminals." She talks about the sheep a lot, of course, and sometimes the cows. There are horses there too but they are kept very far away from the children so she doesn't see them as much. One of the barns not used in the nursery is full of cooing doves and sometimes owls, and Leah is able to distinguish between the sounds they make from lots of practice. The other day she was going through the kinds of sounds that the different animals make, and she said, "well, a cow says moo and a dog says meow." I said, "A dog says meow?" She added, "and then the cat says, 'what's he on about?" in a very British accent. I think this must be a quote from a teacher, or a line in a book that they read at school, but in any case it really made me laugh.

The nursery does have a proper garden with play equipment, but one advantage of going to nursery on a farm is that there's all kind of interesting equipment to see on the walks.

Leah's the one in the bright pink snowsuit, by the way. Note that I did buy her the requisite hat with ear flaps that all the other kids have here!