Sunday, June 06, 2010

multilingual

First grader Lola informed the Sober Husband today: "I speak many languages. I speak English, pig Latin, gibberish, and Momdude. 'Daddude' isn't really a language, so I don't speak that." She gestured animatedly. "It's really kind of geeky talking, tech stuff."

Without rising to the bait, the Sober Husband took her back a step. "When you say you 'speak Momdude', what do you mean?"

Lola enjoyed the chance to explicate her learned theories. "Well, for example, when you ask Momdude a question she doesn't want to answer, she does this." From where I was, I couldn't see what she did, but the Sober Husband oohed and aahed over her acuity.

"Wait!" I interjected. "What is this?"

Lola came over to me. "Let's say for example, I ask you, 'Are we getting kittens?', and you don't say anything. You do this." Lola stuck her chin out at an angle.

The gesture had no familiarity to me. The Sober Husband chimed in. "It's true. When you're asked a yes or no question, and you don't want to say no, you do that." He moved his face in an imitation of Lola's, in a way that looked completely alien to me. He continued explaining. "You reject the binary nature of yes or no questions." He and Lola beamed at each other. I was nonplussed.

2 comments:

hughman said...

i think they are watching you too closely.

2amsomewhere said...

The Sober Husband chimed in. "It's true. When you're asked a yes or no question, and you don't want to say no, you do that." He moved his face in an imitation of Lola's, in a way that looked completely alien to me. He continued explaining. "You reject the binary nature of yes or no questions." He and Lola beamed at each other. I was nonplussed.

Tell Sober that you're like Mathematica's If[ ] construct. It has four elements:

If[conditional expression,
returned if conditional evaluates to True,
returned if conditional evaluates to False,
returned if conditional evaluates neither to True nor False
]

Since he has a background in physics, he probably will be familiar with what I'm talking about. ;-)

--
2amsomewhere