Kid Lingo

Some people talk about how their most precious memories of their kids are of their first few unaided steps, which quickly translates into walking. This is true for me, too, and I certainly look back fondly on how both my son and daughter took to walking after what seemed like an eternity of getting around on all fours.

But there is another camp, to which I more rightly belong, that tingles with joy when recalling how their kids first learned how to talk. I love to write and, under certain circumstances, to talk, to this should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me.

What I love about watching kids learn how to talk, more than hearing how they fumble with their "l"s and "r"s is the words they invent out of sheer effort to properly enunciate the words they are being taught.

My son's nickname is a classic example of this. After Theia and I had him baptized Raphael Luis, we were at a loss as to how to name him. Our first idea was to call him Luis, but for some reason it seemed to formal or something like that. Some relatives called him "Paeng" after the great bowler, which made for a good Filipino name, until one such relative came up with the decidedly unsavory moniker "tiyo paeng" (anyone who speaks Filipino should say "tiyo" fast and know what's wrong with the way the nickname sounds) and so Theia and I quickly developed an aversion to this nickname. We tried calling him "Rui" as a contraction of "Raphael" and "Luis" but it never caught on.

And so we decided to name him Raphael.

Except that he couldn't say Raphel. All he could manage was "Ape" and later "Apel." And so he became Apel.

I remember his first word: "Jaberdee." To this day, I'm convinced that my wife and I should have tried to make him a spokesperson for "Jollibee" considering he could name their brand even before he could say "Mama" or "Papa."

My daughter Tala, however, is a virtual gold mine of anecdotes on how to talk. Her nickname is not similarly storied, because even before she was born we had already devised "Tala" as an acronym for her full name: Therese Antoinette Libuit Arroyo.

As is the case with most girls, her verbal development is far quicker than her brother's was, and so fortunately for us "mama" and "papa" were among the first words she learned. This appears to be an offshoot of her ability to pick up what she hears very quickly. Unfortunately, it also translates into her refusal to call her brother "Kuya," which I guess is natural considering that neither of her parents do. Instead, she calls him "Apet." It actually goes the same for her aunt and uncle on Theia's side, whom she calls by their names rather than prefixing "Tito" and "Tita."

I love how quickly Tala learned how to call her yaya by name.

I love how she says "Hat Whees" or "caw" when referring to her brother's toy cars, which she seems far more interested in than any of the dolls we showed her when we went to a toy store once.

My all time favorite, however, is the word Tala's has come up with to tell us she's hungry. "Eatawan," she declares rather vociferously when she wants to chow down. Whether that's "want to eat" scrambled up, or "eat now" I don't really know, but it really does crack me up.

Apel is learning how to talk properly; I've heard many people tell me how remarkably well he expresses himself for someone his age, considering a lot of his classmates fumble considerably with English. I figure I have a couple of more years of anecdotes for Tala before she starts talking properly as well, or maybe even less time, considering how fast she's learning.

Still, it's nice to have these little vignettes while they're here.