Long overdue language update

So I promised a while ago to give an update on Sophia's language, and a lot has happened in that department since then. Here's a summary of where she is now.

Parroting
Sophia is now a complete parrot. She will say anything we say, and her pronunciation is really quite good, depending on the word. Listening to her every day helps a lot as well - there are a few words we understand when she says them (parroting or no), that other folks are completely confused by (bakalo = bicycle), but when she's parroting, it's pretty clear what she is saying. And since she parrots nonsense words as readily as real words, this alone isn't much evidence of cognition, but as you will see, we have plenty of other evidence.

One consequence of parroting is that she isn't great at voicing choices yet. If I give her a list of options, she invariably chooses the last one (since that's the last one she heard). If we offer her two snacks, she'll reach for the one she wants, so actually making choices is fine, and she is regularly adamant about what she wants and will make it clear when what she want is not what is provided, but choosing from a list isn't quite there yet.

Vocabulary
As can be expected, her vocabulary is exploding. She has subcategories for many things now, differentiating, for example, between "berry", "blueberry", "strawberry" etc. It would take too long to list everything she can say, but the number of words she is using, in the correct context, without prompting, is astounding. Frequently, she hears airplanes going overhead and will say "Airplane!" usually before we can hear it. Today, she heard a noise and said "Hapacopper" and we weren't sure what she was talking about until the noise got louder and indeed it was a helicopter. Not only is it a word in her vocabulary, but she can differentiate between airplanes and helicopters by the sound they make.

Sentences
Sophia has officially graduated to noun-verb pairings, modifiers, even articles and pronouns. She routinely makes original parings that she hasn't heard before. More and more these are including possessives, like "Daddy shirt" and "Mommy 'puter" (for the laptop Tricia spends more time on). She uses "one" as an article, as in "one book" or "one carrot." "Pretty ____" is commonplace (pretty flower, pretty tree, pretty dress, pretty pajamas), and yesterday in church she said "pretty window" looking at the stained glass. Here are just a few other "Sophia original" sentences:

• You read it? (asking someone to read a book)
  
• bye-bye lub yoo
  
• okay all done
  
• william photo? (asking to see a picture of her friend william)
  
• dwa dwa paper. (can I have some paper to draw?)
  
• trampoline boing boing jumping!
  
• daddy tickle you!
  
• watch fraggle rock? Dance! (she loves to see those fraggles dance)
  
• nana pappa 'cuber (nanna and poppa are in vancouver)
  
• grampa gramma winnipeg.
  
• happee happee birdee to you (ok, not original, but loves to say it, even when no birthday is evident)
  
• happee mama day (took some training, but well worth it)
  

The best ones, though, are when sophie will ramble on for a minute or two with what sounds like random syllables, but clearly is something of critical importance. she really does go on and on.

Associations
Sophia is getting better at making abstract connections between language, objects, and activities at other times of day. For example, we were sitting in her bed and she pointed at the star on her sheet and said "twinkle star brush teeth!" Now it helps to know that "twinkle twinkle little star" is the song we sing while we are brushing her teeth, so she puts in enough time. So she saw a star, linked it to the song "twinkle twinkle little star" and linked that to brushing teeth. Pretty abstract, if you ask me.

Memory
She's getting much better at re-telling stories and activities later in the day. For example, we spent the morning in Brora yesterday, at church. 10 minutes into the service, she got bored and started babbling, making comments about her mother's service etc, so we went outside to wander around. We heard a big train and watched it go by down the tracks (about a hundred potash cars, if you care). then we saw a big truck drive by, and then we saw a horse in a pasture and went up to say hi, then we saw a tractor come in to the field across the road, deploy a great big spring cultivator, and proceed to stir up dust and cultivate the field. we also saw some birds and flowers and a friendly but mangy dog wandering around the prairie. Later that day when she was talking to Grandma and Grandpa, she could recite many of the things we had seen that morning. Tracktor, Train, Truck, Horsey, Birds, Flowers, Dog. and in the evening, she started rattling off the list again, unprompted.

Manners
She says please and thank-you. Considerable prompting is required, but we are to the point where "What do you say" results in "peese" before she gets whatever she is asking for, and a timid "ten-kew" afterward.

Completion
She is getting good at recognizing context and filling in the blanks. She offers several letters in the alphabet as we go through, and all we need to say is "one" and she'll say "Two, Threeeeeeee!" She also routinely fills in the blank when reading books she likes. Munch books work well for this, including "murmel murmel murmel," but she is also very good at recounting the stories of the "Mr Men" books. She particularly likes "little miss naughty" and will go around the house with the book in one hand, tweaking her nose with the other (you have to know the story).

Letters
So last month we saw that she identified the letter "H", but it appeared to only be a fluke because all other letters were also "H". Well it turns out her little mind was working on making associations between letters and what they sound like, because now she can regularly identify several letters, including the first few letters in her name (she mistakes "I" for "1", but don't we all...), and she can recognize her name when written. Here's proof:



Oh, and a couple photos of her pigtails, which you may have noticed in the video. Her comment? "pretty hair!"




Colours

Alas, with all this progress, colours are still a complete mystery to her. She knows the words for colours and will repeat and sometimes originate them, but they are always wrong. "What colour is this" may produce "green" or "blue" or "yellow", but it has no relation to the colour of the object, and all subsequent objects are also labeled "green" or "blue" or "yellow". It will come with time...