Hello Arham.
You are four months old today.
You are far away in America and we yearn to take you in our arms! We eagerly wait for your video calls and I am sure you think your nani and nanu live in the mobile!
You love it when I call out Arhammmmmmmmmmmm… though it will be another couple of months before you realize it refers to you. You perk up immediately when we begin speaking to you – slowly in a singsong manner… I read somewhere such talk is helping you work out the sounds of language. This is why you love the rhyme and rhythm of your nanu’s silly songs!
You watch us closely as we speak… you pucker your lips and flex your tongue almost as if trying to form a reply! Your ooooooo and aaaaaaa and eeeeeee leave us enthralled! The other day when you came out with something like hiiiiiiiiiiiiiieee in response to your mom’s HI, we hopped around in happiness!
Within a couple of weeks you will begin to babble… you will begin to use back-of-tongue consonants and say baaaa, daaaaa, gaaaaa, paaaaa, kaaaaa… soon you will learn to combine these sounds and your babble will begin to sound like words. By one year, you will know about 50 words! And you will string them together to say sentences! Isn’t that amazing?
Come to think of it… A few sounds build hundreds of words that combine in thousands of ways to create millions of sentences that can express a zillion feelings, thoughts and ideas! And this amazing way of communicating is unique to us humans! We begin to absorb our mom’s voice much before we are born, and as we grow older, keep learning new words every day till we become pros ourselves!
And all this complex language learning just from hearing it! We all – me and your nanu, your maamu, your mom and dad – learned it from hearing others use it!
Isn’t it fantastic? Isn’t it fascinating? Isn’t it simply wonderful?!
Being Meeta 