Linguistic Adventures Of an 8-Year-Old

A doctor’s kid is always sick, a shoemaker’s kid is walking barefoot, a teacher’s kid constantly gets detentions. You get the picture. Well, a person, who loves everything language, has an 8-year-old son who makes her (and everyone around) wonder and gives us hours of entertainment. Plus some material for my blog:)

Here are just a few snippets of our recent linguistic adventures.

Is “Pickup” a Noun? A Verb? Or a Phrasal Verb? You Be the Judge

We were talking about the sweepstakes for a cool trike that I entered and my 8-year-old boy G. says: “Oh, if we win it, I’m gonna be so pickup!” My husband and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. I do admit we chuckled a little as well, because somehow this didn’t sound right and we thought it meant something else in adult language.  Then I noticed that my 11-year-old is almost choking on his food from laughing. It turns out, “to be pickup” means that your mom or dad pick you up from school instead of you going on a bus. Duh! Of course, you’d want somebody to come and pick you up in the coolest trike ever!

Limbo

On the way from our outing, we passed by a parking lot next to a restaurant. There was a huge purple truck with a cowboy riding on a bull on top of it parked in the parking lot. G. says: “Oh my, that’s a huge limbo!”. A what? A limbo. When I started explaining that limbo is a type of dance, he said: “No! Don’t you know the car that’s called  a “limbo”?!” It turns out he wanted to say limo… Language is so confusing. The word is just one letter off, why should it make a difference?

Opera

My friend was visiting the other day and we were sitting at the kitchen island. G. was so excited to come and talk to her about his Pokemon cards. He exclaimed: “I wish there was an opera house nearby!” She looked puzzled: “What do you mean, an “opera house”? “You know, the place where I could sell all my cards!” She smiled: “You mean the auction house?” The boy’s eyes lit up: “Yeah, that!” Alrighty, then… I wish there was an opera house near our town, too… But for completely different reasons than my son:)

Star Wars Reinvented!

And finally, here is a gem: the kids were talking about Star Wars game on their PS4 and G. says: “I really like what Boochaka did”. Wait, who? Boochaka, that big hairy character. Yep, you guessed it right. He meant Chubaka.

What fun language moments have you experienced? Or maybe your kids have made you laugh so hard that you said “I totally have to write this down!” ? I’d love to hear it!