What does it mean?

Any Spanish used in blog posts is hyperlinked to its English translation.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Things she says

tememos
This one is a good 6 weeks old. She was so proud of herself, using it CONSTANTLY. I'd walk in the door in the evening and she'd look all around for something. "Mami! Tememos... *grabs first toy she sees*... jirafa!"

Yo te cargo!
Of course, we ask her this *all the time*. So, when she wants Up, this is what she says. It's especially sweet when she's in tears, standing there with her arms up, offering to carry us.

Me ayudas!
If she wants help with something, she simply groans, "Ayuuuuuuda!!" (I don't know why the groaning. But it's always groaning.) But if she wants to participate in something (unloading of the dishwasher, for example), she comes running over, saying, "Help me!" as her offer to provide assistance.

No quieres.
In the same vein as above. When she's done with her plate, or decided she doesn't like whatever's on it, she picks it up with two hands and thrusts it in your direction, telling you about how you don't want it. She uses it to talk about her needs and wants other times too. She'll point to her chest and say, "*Her name* no quieres" if she's telling you about something she doesn't want, or something that she didn't want earlier that day. Interestingly, she rarely uses 3rd person with this one. For instance, she'll tell you about what her Cat in the Hat does or doesn't want, but she'll say "El gato no quieres..." She rarely makes that error with other verbs, but nearly always does with querer.

The Guajolotita makes 4 word sentences (and longer) as a matter of course now, almost always in the 3rd person. "El camion pasa por la calle," for instance (I'm counting that as a 3 or 4 word sentence - she uses the correct articles but I'm not gonna count them as separate words for this purpose.) There are also plenty of times that she sort of strings some nouns together and adds a verb, sometimes conjugated, sometimes not, to get her point across. She uses 1st person conjugations appropriately on a daily basis, but not *reliably*. That is, she might say "Quiero comer!" at one point during the day, but she will more frequently just holler, "Comer camote!" or "Comer avena con pasas!"

She seems to be starting to make the conjugations herself. As shown above, most of the time it's rote memorization, simply repeating back the phrase in its entirety however she hears it, which generally means incorrect conjugation. (She's not actually planning on carrying me.) But every day she tries it out on some of her most-used verbs (as you can guess, "comer" is one of those!). Juego, como, quiero... can't think of others just now.