Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Furry paws

Mamma Mogantosh got me thinking about the way families develop their own language or shorthand. I always felt that perhaps my family had more of this than a lot of families, but perhaps I am mistaken. It also seems as though the K-man's family is big on having a private language. Now that I think about it, in my family, it was a particularly private language, which excluded others and could at times be quite claustrophobic. Perhaps it was cemented by the process of immigration, I'm not sure. And, I am never sure if the sayings that my father has are things he has made up or things that were common in Zimbabwe from the 30s to the 80s or sayings he acquired from his Scottish father. What this means is that the K-man and I are now busily inventing our own language, perhaps as a form of family creation. So, no doubt when Chet starts school he will be well versed in the language of MacLean-James which will prepare him for, well, nothing at all, apart from being able to communicate with his family. Hopefully.

Our language is not as developed as the Mogantosh's but I am sure, that given time, it will blossom into a veritable bed of thorny roses. At the moment, babies are referred to as leapys, Chet has paws and footskas and furs (although not furry paws at this stage) and he has just grown two tooffles and likes to suck on his dum dum. He wears clothses and he communes daily with the pusskin who in turn is a rooster girl. Whenever Chet is hungry he is a hungry hungry hippo and whenever he rolls over he is doing a roly poly. And he seems to have quite a collection of funts (elephants) in all shapes and sizes. I can see looking at this selection that some of the phrases are from my family, some from the K-man's and some are our own creation - just like Chet I guess.

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