A book coming out this month may be interesting. We all make slips of the tongue, stumbling over words and accidentally misstating though we know better. Young children do that too, and linguist Jeri Jaeger, having studied their slips as clues to language-acquisition, has written Kids' Slips.

A child may err from not properly understanding a word (ignorance), or from knowing but misstating (slip of the tongue). To distinguish the two you need to be familiar with that particular child's normal language-use. So unsurprisingly, many of Jaeger's examples came from the mouths of the children she knew best - her own three childen.

Can you imagine the scene in the home, as mom hears a slip and tries to write it down unobtrusively? Ms. Jaeger's husband, also a linguist, would tease the children, "Somebody made a speech slip! Who made a speech slip?" Daughter Anna, now 22, recalls, "I'd say something and she'd very stealthily pull something out to write it down. She'd pull out her notebook, and I would say, 'What did I say wrong?'"

Anna also tells what it was like to grow up with two linguists for parents. "Being a child of linguists is, like, very odd, because your parents get excited about these technical, very boring things. Most 5-year-olds don't know what a phoneme is. I did."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

I bet both jheem's and aput's kids would know "phoneme" at age 1!

I will never forget when my oldest was about 9 months. I was changing her diaper, and I always talked to her while I did things. She had a diaper rash, so I reached for the Desitin. She said (and, I swear, she said this!): "De Di Den" I was just shocked. However, she has grown up to be incredibly verbal, and I think that was an early recognition of language. Of course, my pediatrician pooh-poohed it, but what does he know!

My son learned to read using a very directed curriculum of learning phonemes first. Due to his already vast vocabulary, once he learned the decoding system he was able to read and understand just about any word in front of him. It's nothing short of miraculous, if you ask me.

Tip of the slongue, or lapsus linguæ. One year old might be a little earlier, but they would know what it meant by 5. It's amazing how something that one person finds fascinating, can cause in another ennui. The subject matter is the same, but the folks are different. I've always pretty much felt that way about automobiles.