English Wave Heats

It's been beautiful here the last few days. Last week we had a blizzard, and this weekend, the robins are twittering outside the windows.

The other day the kids were out in the yard playing, and Adam poked his nose in the door and shouted, "Mama! It's a Wave Heat out here!!" and then he went back outside.

So his English isn't perfect yet. But he's trying. It is actually pretty good lately, to tell you the truth - he's been a lot more careful with his pronunciation and thinking his words through. He's still wanting to dump half of the words when he's excited or in a rush, like instead of saying, "Would you watch me do my exercises?" just tonight he said, "Wou'y'watch me do m'ex'c's? But he said it beautifully when I asked him for a repeat.

English vowel sounds are killers to anyone, and Adam has struggled with them hard. Pen/pan, bus/boss, etc. have been really hard to differenciate in his speech. The other day he said he wanted to wear a "pen" on his head for a "het." He of course meant a "pan" for a "hat." He can say and hear the difference though, when we ask him to try again. We just today asked him to say pen/pan and he said them both like any good ole Yankee would.

His r's are still causing him trouble too, though he can do them really well on a "repeat." They just take a lot of effort, you know. ;o) I have no idea how to describe how he actually says his "r's" when he isn't thinking - It's like he tries to do away with ANY /r/ sound at all, and just skips to the next vowel. Initial /r's/ are hard, but at least he does them. The ones buried inside of words are usually skipped altogether. Like, um, let's see... a "storm" would be a "stome;" an "arm," is an "ahm;" a "girl" is a "gull." He'd make a really good Brit, actually, lol! (You have to remember, we're really nasally midwesterners up here, so those "r's" are extra thick to us natives.)

But he's coming along. Just in the last year, he's really come a long way with his speech, and some have said they've noticed big changes even since Christmastime. Slowly but surely...