A Language of Her Own

Norah Grace and her beautiful mommy (and the long gray nose of Shiloh the horse)

She points her finger toward the field, looks that way and back again at us.

"Ooh!"

Norah Grace says it quickly--not long and drawn out like you say when you see something beautiful but rather fast, like a sneeze.

We look where she's pointing, already knowing what we'd find

"You want to see the horse?"

One emphatic nod answers the question and off we go.

Norah saying hi to one of the horses with her Papaw.

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So how did Norah, after hearing the word "horse" a thousand times or more, come up with "ooh!" to represent the big, four legged creatures walking through the fields?

I have no idea.

It's pretty common (so I understand) for toddlers to come up with a way of speaking that only family ends up able to comprehend. I'm starting to see this and can now compile the Norah Grace translation guide thus far:

ooh! = horse
dee-dee = chicken
ga = cat
abbey = just about any dog
wah = anything that starts with w (namely walk and wet and wagon), along with playground. Playground=W?
buh = this can mean drink or outside. Where did this come from? Your guess is as good as mine.
bee = fishies (as in goldfish)
gee = geese

And, of course, there's the German. No matter how many times we say "thank you," she still says "danke." When we say "finished?" she says "alle." A few days ago I told her to get her shoes and she walked to where all the shoes are, pointed to hers and said "die?" This is actually pronounced dee and is a plural pronoun in German. Basically, from my understanding, she was saying "these?"

We'll see what she comes up with next.