h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And for anyone wishing to suggest there's a genetic link, it should be known that, in my niece's case, any smart gene in my family must have skipped her father.

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The wife and I had actually planned to do this, but the kid ended up speaking early enough we never managed to get there. By the time she had the hand coordination to be able to sign "hungry" to us, for example, she could already tell us "num-num."

"num-num"

That was our son's second word.

The first sounded like "onnyon" then later evolved into "mama"

I think TRiG hit it on the head (the nail, that is). Somewhere, I read that a child must hear a verbal configuration 500 times before s/he can vocalise it. I also read that a woman vocalises 3 times more than a man (or does it just seem that way? )

Anyway, our first language at home is Arabic, and there are specific windows of acquisition for some of our weirder consonants (the ones that sound like we're spitting and hawking, fighting and generally being anti-social) - it would seem logical that the same applies for vocalisation of vowels.

W

My daughter's first word, though we didn't know it at the time, was a word for "blanket" which was really just a noise made at the back of the throat, with the mouth closed, that sounds approximately like "gnnn-gnnn." We just thought it was a noise she made to indicate she was tired, until sometime later, when she had enough words to ask, "Where'd gnnn-gnnn go?"

Yesterday she attempted "refrigerator," and it was high comedy. Her tongue has definitely not kept up with her vocabulary.