Yesterday Peter and Alethea were playing with her Leap Frog music table. Alethea had her hand on the green piano key, so it kept saying, “Green, green, green” over and over. Without warning Alethea opens her mouth and says “Green.” Clear as a bell, without a doubt, she said “Green”.
I was astounded because it was so plainly a word. So, I said to Peter, “I can’t believe Alethea’s first word is ‘Green’.” (Because of course I always assumed her first word would be “Mommy”, “Daddy” or “Up”, you know, something to do with her growing relationship with her fabulous parents, but I digress.)
But then Peter said, “It doesn’t count, though. She was only repeating the sound the toy was making. She doesn’t even know what ‘Green’ is.”
So what do you all think? Does saying ‘green’ go in the category of ‘just happened to make the sounds of a real word’ along with Iowa, hi, Ohio, Dada and other things that have come out of her mouth without her knowing the meaning? Or does ‘green’ count as her first word since she was repeating what she heard, not just babbling out random sounds?
It’s possible. All baby speech is mimicry, so if she really said it, she really said it.
Of course it counts. Adults says stuff all the time that they don’t know what they’re saying.
Green counts. Speech is just copying what everyone else is saying. You can say words in a foreign language and not really understand the meaning unless it has been taught in a class. Immersion Schools teach by dumping the student in the language, and they learn by listening and using the word. Peter is too cautious: Did he really understand Tokyo when he as 15 months?
Yes, green is her first word. She spoke! She spoke!