Grammar Lesson

This one is from Zachary.  He has always been very good at speaking English correctly.  At his 18 monh check-up I was a little worried about him because he didn't talk AT ALL!  And then about 2 weeks later the complete sentences started flowing from him.  He had all the sounds of speech right and made sure to get the words right.  Even when he was a little guy he would go to extremes to avoid using a preposition at the end of a sentence.  For example, he would ask, "Whose turn is it to tuck in me?"  Somehow he just picked up that it was not ideal to end a sentence with a preposition.

Another thing he has picked up is the proper use of adverbs.  Always, always he uses a word that ends with -ly to describe a verb.  Too much Schoolhouse Rock?  Perhaps.  But he just figured it out.  When there is not an appropriate actual adverb to use, he creates one.  My favorite is "sneakily."  Such as, "I sneakily slept in Aubrey's room last night," or, "We sneakily played the wii while you were gone."  Another good thing about Zachary is he doesn't keep secrets.

One other word he says that kills me is "crunkled."  You know, the past-tense of "to crunkle."  This word is used as an adjective to describe, say, a wadded up piece of paper that you are trying to straighten out--but it is crunkled.  Or it can be a verb, such as crunkling up your towel to put in the laundry chute.  You can modify this word to be the adjective "crunkly," which can describe a wrinkled shirt or my dry heels (he told me my feet looked crunkly yesterday).

It is really fun now that he is reading everything he sees and figures the world out through words, but I am hoping he does not figure out any time soon that crunkle and sneakily are not actually words.