More Fun than Trucker Lingo

I can’t believe Wikipedia has an entry for “Baby Talk.” However, I’m extremely disappointed that this discourse on infantile communication has been written with perfect grammatical American English, and not actually baby talk. That would have been awesome.

What am I doing looking up baby talk on the internet? Firstly, I’m a dork. I’m a William and Mary dork. When something major life event comes along you hit the library or the net to do research on it (I first heard this in a WM Best Man speech, and it rings loudly true.) Secondly, I have a baby. Thirdly, she thinks she’s the premier orator of her generation. You know, even if she hasn’t said her first word. (Note: goocooooblaaawaah is not a real word.)

Clara is slightly over 4 months old now, some 5 months before the Internet Mommies say real words will start to come. (They also point out that “the "d" sound usually comes before the "m" sound. Sorry Katie, I will convince her to be left-handed during our limited window of direct communication. Bwah.) Now you might remember that when that time comes, I’ve already laid out baby’s first alphabet so that she may become an advanced intellectual visionary-type. But since those ABC’s consist of real words, and we’re full NFL season away from them, we’re getting back to basics.

The three most common words we use when talking to our child are “mama,” “dada,” and “baba.”

Mama is no doubt step 1 to identifying the mother. Dada is the first name she’ll ever call me, and at the same time, confuse me with a WWI Swiss cultural arts movement. Baba has been the term for bottle, or as I like to call it, the “Silencer.” Katie brough baba into our vocabulary, but I had no idea that this was a widespread term for cylinder of milk. You learn something new every day.

Notice something similar about these three words? Yeah, they all have identical make-ups. Each word shall be constructed using a consonant, the letter a, and repeat Steps 1 and 2. mama, dada, baba. See, symmetry is our friend.But why stop there? We’ve got five whole months of primitive baby communication to kill. So without further ado, here’s the rest of Clara’s First Spelling Words.

haha – laughter; used to express enjoyment, hilarity, and glee.
gaga – standard baby conversational filler; equivalent to the adult phrase, “Lovely weather we’re having.”
nana – used twice consecutively and followed by a “nah, Hey!;” used for cheering on daddy at softball games
tata – a closing, as in “See you later, Mom. I will now be crawling behind this couch.”
rara – when a baby has déjà vu of the Egyptian god of the Sun
fafa – baby’s favorite Guster song
kaka – baby’s favorite Brazilian soccer player
jaja – baby’s least favorite Star Wars character; Uncle Lucas, what were you thinking, man?
yaya – it appears our child knows some divine secrets of a certain sisterhood
lala – singing; melodic tune; has nothing to do with any stupid Teletubbies
wawa – baby’s first Mid-Atlantic convenience store
vava – baby’s first Mid-Atlantic convenience store in Germany