Finnglish

I used to feel bad when a friend's toddler would tell me something and I wouldn't understand what he or she was saying. I felt like I was letting them all down, which is ridiculous. I'm a regular attendee of the Finnglish 101 class and I barely have any idea what this guy is talking about.

It's not like he mumbles. Or is shy about repeating himself. In fact, I think he's been screaming "cow" every 5 seconds for the past month and a half. The problem is that I have no idea whether he's talking about a cow, a car or his underfunded college savings account. I mean, let's face it, his pronunciation stinks.

The trick I used in high school French (cheating off of the kid next to me) isn't working out (Kitty's penmanship is terrible), so I've resorted to trying to focus on what he's pointing at/vaguely looking at/in the general vicinity of to try and define the word based on context. Using these cues, I've been able to piece together the following:

• Sri = tree
• Sruh = truck
• Kee = kitty (not Mommy, which is a nice clearly enunciated "Momma")
• Poo = OK, this one is easy, but it's my personal favorite

He's got more, but these are the top nouns in the rotation these days. Luckily we don't have verbs or any complicated conjugations to make things difficult. There's only one full sentence that he employs, "Na-na", which can mean a variety of things:

• "Give me that."
• "I want that."
• "That interests me a great deal."
• "Hey idiot, I'm not going to stop saying 'na-na' until you hand it over."

He's also got proper names down:

• Ta-ta = Tango
• Chosh = Cash
• How = Aunt Holly
• Lay-aaaah = Future ex-wife #1 Layla

That last one is his personal favorite, since he breaks into a huge grin whenever I make him say it. Enjoy it now, kid, because she's going to chew you up and spit you out. And I mean that in the best possible way.

My personal favorite, of course, is "Dah-eeeee." I've been getting lots of these lately, as Finn appears to have entered a (sure to be brief) Daddy period. If I can teach him to say "Jeter," I can die a happy man.