What Asya says

Asya is starting to talk more and more.  I still don't think she's reached that "linguistic explosion" stage, but she's close.  Yes, I was just looking at the last time I wrote about her speech, and she's come a long way since then.  We have conversations now.  At least, it's getting close to conversations.

The funniest thing is her foreign language words.  As far as I know, she's never heard German, but when she's mad, instead of yelling, "no" or "нет," it's a very clear "nein."  And hedgehog is "їжа," like їжак in Ukrainian.  The way I figured that one out is funny.  I should have understood it, but I didn't.  She was carrying a pine cone around, petting it, babying it, putting it to bed, feeding it, and calling it ляля їжа (baby yizha).  I asked her why she was doing that, what kind of baby it was, and she just repeated "їжа, їжа."  When dense Mama didn't understand that, she gently put down her pine cone, let out a deep sigh, and signed "hedgehog." Ah!

We've joked for a while about her speaking Chinese, too.  She has several words that are very dependent on tone and sound nothing like Russian or English.  Дай comes out like dau with a funny, drawn out intonation.  Отдай and чай have the same intonation, but they are pronounced dap-DAU and tau.

Like I said, we have conversations.  Recently Asya, Raia and I were sitting outside together.  Raia happened to touch Asya's beloved hat.  Asya crossed her arms and firmly said, "Nein! Wawa, 'ельзя пляпля."  And then she turned to me and tattled: "Wawa пляпля!"  Translation: "No! Raia, шляпа/hat is forbidden. Raia touched my hat!"  (Yaya has evolved into Wawa.)

Пляпля is probably my favorite word that Asya says.  It just sounds so funny and cute!  Every morning and after naps at the dacha, she gets up, usually stark naked.  She says, "пляпля" (hat) and "то," (which means shoes.  I have no idea why.)  Once she has those on, she waves, says "дап-дап," (which being interpreted is пока/bye, again with no apparent reason why), and heads for the door. It's like she's saying, "I have my hat and shoes. I'm ready to go!"

Another really funny one that she's been saying for a long time is попа.  She uses it appropriately when she goes potty and needs to be wiped.  But more often than that, she uses it to mean coffee.  You can sit with her and discuss this for quite a while.  Point to coffee, and ask her what it is: "Попа."  

"Coffee, Asya, coffee."

"Да, попа."

"Coffee."

"Попа."

Another Asya word that took us a while to figure out is "bebe."  At first we thought she was trying to say "baby," but "bebe" actually means sleep/lie down/put to bed.  It has to be accompanied by a sign that she made up.  Maybe it's more related to бай-бай than baby?

Last week she started calling herself Syasya and saying "все" ("tsyoh"), too.  That's probably enough about Asya speech, though.  It's much funnier and cuter to hear it than read it.  I did want to write about all her different babies, but that will have to wait for another time.

(By the way, last time I wrote about this, I also wrote about Raia "speaking Ukrainian."  I actually did hear her use нема for the first time back at Easter.)