This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2281.
How to connect over your childhood mispronunciations.
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Do you have kids who make pronunciation mistakes in English?
This can be a moment to connect with other parents and even tell stories about your childhood pronunciation mistakes.
Listen in today to see what you can say in these conversations.
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Hey Michelle, how's it going today?
How are you? I'm good.
How are you? I'm fantastic today.
I have a question to start off the episode.
All right. I'm excited.
What is it? So did your parents ever tell you about words that you might have mispronounced when you were a little kid, like silly things you said?
Yes, definitely. The first one that comes to mind is I really wanted my ears pierced when I was little, but I couldn't say earrings.
So I called them Eenies.
So I'd say I want Eenies.
I want Eenies. That's very cute.
Oh my god. Eenies. So to this day, we still talk about Eenies and I was like, oh you want Eenies.
So it becomes like family stories and shared culture like a share inside or culture within your family, right?
It's true. What about you?
Any funny ones? Yeah, I used to say coward pitter cow.
So a lot of times kids have a hard time pronouncing the L sound right?
So they'll make that sound that W sound very common for kids for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to talk about this today.
I'm really excited about this episode.
This is pure fun, but it's also an incredible connection topic.
So this is going to be a huge episode.
Yeah, we're going to talk about some things that kids mispronounce, but that's really not the point.
The point is how do you connect with other parents around these mispronunciations, right?
How do you share this with other people, other parents?
Because oftentimes I imagine Michelle as a mom or as your husband probably is often around other families and wanting to connect with parents of other kids while your kids are playing.
Is that right? Yeah, of course.
So this is just it's so much fun to talk about these things when you're at the playground and you meet another parent, but it's even if you don't have kids, you were a kid, right?
So people this is a conversation topic that just comes up from time to time even as adults, even if you don't have kids.
So don't think oh, I don't have kids.
I'm not about today.
You can still have these conversations and so you should be prepared for them because they're fun.
No, you're right. It actually does come out when you for 20 30 40 connecting with friends over drinks.
It might come up. It totally does.
So we're getting into it today.
So guys hit follow because here in Allers English, we focus on connection, not perfection and we look for the connection moment in every episode.
We're going to show you what it is today.
So Michelle, could you read our question for a change?
Do something a little different today.
Oh mix that up. Okay.
This question is from Barbara.
So it says dears. I'm Barbara from Treviso a small city in the north of Italy.
Mom of two girls three years and seven months.
Oh, wow. I bet Barbara's busy.
I was wondering if you could answer my question.
What are the most common words in English mangled by kids?
That's a great word.
Whoa, excellent word.
It really high -level.
Yes, for example in my in Italian my daughter says Shrige instead of Tigre, which is Tigre.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm assuming I'm saying it right.
Yeah, which is tiger and maybe if you could add some details about kids language baby talk etc.
It would be great. Thanks a lot Barbara.
This is such a different question.
That is so much fun.
I love when we get slightly different interesting questions that really do apply to our entire audience, even if you're not going to have kids or don't have kids.
So let's go through a couple of the things first Michelle that's the kids do mess up.
I mean they do mangle sometimes by the way fantastic word, right?
That's going to be a keyword for today.
Again, what does it mean just to define it again?
Yeah to mess up. It's kind of an extreme form of messing up right mangle ruin completely destroy certain words.
So to me when I hear this the first one that comes to mind.
I don't know Lindsay if you've heard this is instead of saying spaghetti.
A lot of kids including my kids say bus Basketti.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that definitely sounds familiar.
That is something I feel I probably would have said as a kid rise or tough.
It's tough if you this spaghetti.
It's a little bit of a tough e so Basketti for a while until they learn spaghetti.
Mm -hmm. And as I said earlier the next one the LW sound can get really confusing right?
So let's see. What is your son say?
Michelle when he was little instead of calling water water.
He would sometimes say Lada or Luddy and yeah, or he had a teacher named Gladys and he would call her Gattis.
Yeah, but I loved the Luddy thing because it was it didn't I don't know how that came to be.
But even it's very very now he can say water, but we always will say Luddy more.
He would run up to me more Luddy more Luddy.
That's very cute. That's very cute.
I love it. And then hand sanitizer Michelle.
Oh, they combine it.
That is so smart. Actually, I love that.
I like it. I might take that.
So yeah, so my son did this but also I've been reading in when I was doing research for this life.
I saw that this was a common one instead of saying hand sanitizer.
They say handitizer brilliant brilliant.
I will let us a maybe you start a company selling hand sanitizer one day.
We'll see. Yep. And then and then my daughter she instead of she would have trouble saying the cut so she would make it a huh.
So she instead of saying come on.
Come on. She would say, come on.
Come on. Oh, cute. So those were cute ones any any that you others that you remember or maybe one.
Oh sir, I know there are some I know there were others.
The only one that comes to mind is the coward pitter and there's another one and I just can't think of it because there were two that my dad used to make fun of me for together and I just can't think of the other one.
So long ago Michelle honestly.
Yeah, I mean Lindsay, why do you think this is a good connection?
Topic well because it's all about telling stories connection is about telling stories that someone else is going to relate to and our goal here is to be able to do that in English if we're living abroad or if we're just speaking in English with a native speaker.
So that's what we're going to get into after the break Michelle.
Yeah. Yep. All right.
Okay, so we are back from the break and let's talk about how we could turn these little these little pieces into a connection moment.
These little stories of what your kids are saying or what you used to say.
Yeah, right. Exactly.
So we have a couple different contexts here.
So the first one is to share about someone else.
So Lindsay could you give us the first example?
Yes, so we could say my son or daughter or niece or nephew calls XY.
So for example, my son calls spaghetti biscuity.
Okay, right. Yeah, yeah, they call it kind of cool.
Why? Yeah exactly the name of a dish somewhere in some silly Italian restaurant or something spaghetti Biscuity.
Exactly exactly or you could say it like this.
My son daughter niece nephew whoever it is a child.
Do you have a connection with says X instead of Y.
So instead of calls XY here we saying says X instead of Y.
So of course X is the incorrect way and Y is the correct way.
So for example, my daughter says handitizer instead of hand sanitizer and it's very cute.
I mean, these are the things that we love about our kids or nieces and nephews.
Right. These are the little personality quirks that you know is so endearing are very endearing, but then we could also talk about ourselves, right?
Right. Which is interesting because this honestly does come up Michelle among friends.
It does. It does. So Lindsay, what's one thing you could say about yourself?
So you could say when I was a kid, I would say X instead of Y.
It's interesting that we're using would there.
What do we use wood for instead of I said right X instead of Y?
What do you think? What's the subtle difference grammatically speaking?
Yeah, instead of saying I said X instead of Y.
I'm trying to think of why specifically we would do that.
Lindsay, any thoughts?
Well, it seems to me like it's your you're telling talking about a habit that you had something repetitively if I said when I was a kid, I said X instead of Y.
It actually doesn't apply.
It's a habit, but it also could have been once if I want to be very clear.
It was a repetitive habit.
I would say X instead of Y.
Yes. Good point. Okay.
Good. I'm glad that you brought that up.
That's very good. Yeah.
Or another thing. Oh, so what's the example there?
Okay, so I think you better do that.
Okay. When I was a kid, I would say E knees instead of earrings.
Nice. Nice. I love it.
And then next one you could say my parents told me I couldn't say the blank sound.
So I called X Y. Okay.
So what does that look like Michelle in an example?
Okay. My parents told me I couldn't say the L sound.
So I called my sister Laura.
Wara. I'm not sure when that goes away.
I don't know. We don't teach kids here at All There's English.
So we don't really know exactly when that goes away, but it's a good question.
Do you have a sense?
I mean I would say I was trying to listen to how my son speaks.
I think a lot of it has gone away.
The L W specifically, but there are times when I'll hear still he's he'll be six in November and there are times when I still hear a slight incorrect pronunciation or something like that.
But I would say four or five or when things it and it's so funny because it happens.
So suddenly it happens all of a sudden you realize one day, you know, my daughter would say to me.
Come on. And then all of a sudden she just said come on mommy and that's so cool.
And there's this moment as a parent where you're so happy.
Wow. Oh my gosh, you did it.
And then there's also a little bit of sadness.
Oh, that's cool. That must be cool to watch that in real time happening, right?
That change. I think so many of our listeners are going to be able to relate to that.
Wow. Yeah, but there's a little bit of oh sometimes.
Oh, so actually one that my son says instead of oh I broke something he would say I broke it and he still says it to this day and I'll say don't correct him.
I like it. But then Dan says no, he's going to be we have to correct.
He's going to be in high school saying I know we don't want that.
Yeah, you probably do have to correct it.
Yeah, probably is probably the best thing.
No, but but the cool thing about this is we can get nicknames that can come out of this, right or siblings could bond over maybe later in life.
You still call something a certain way, right?
I mean, even when I was little, my mom said that I would get on the phone with my grandparents and I would say Dama that's what I called grandma.
And I'd say want to talk to Tampa a minute.
So gamma a Dama and Tampa.
So there are things that they're they just come up and you never forget them and it's a part of your family history.
And maybe it becomes the name we did an episode when I did that episode right about or was it Aubrey and I can't I can never remember which ones you and I recorded or Aubrey and I but anyways there was an episode about what you call older your grandparents.
You and I did that one together and that could go into that too, right?
So Michelle, let's do a roleplay then about how this looks.
Yeah, okay. Here we go.
So in this roleplay, sorry, I had to scroll down to it.
We are talking about our kids.
Okay, here we go. Yes.
Stevie has started doing the funniest thing.
He calls turtles, herples.
That's adorable. Janie says Papa instead of pasta.
Terrible. My parents told me I couldn't say the S sound.
So I called my sister Steffy Teffy.
I love that. Very typical and also what it would look like if you're just talking about your own weird habits as a kid would be very similar to this roleplay.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
So we go back and take a look at it, Michelle.
Let's do it. All right.
So here first thing I see you said was Stevie has started doing the funniest thing.
That's an interesting way to open a conversation and we could talk about that another day on All There's English Guys hit that follow button.
But you said he calls turtles, furples.
Yep, exactly. He calls X Y, right?
And then you said that's adorable.
And then you said Janie says Papa instead of pasta.
So something instead of the correct thing.
Yeah, and then I see you said my parents told me I couldn't say the S sound.
So I called my sister Stephanie Teffy.
Yeah, that's cute. That sounds very typical.
Right. Yes. Wow. Good topic.
Great question from our amazing listener.
We love your questions, guys.
Thank you to Barbara for that question.
Yeah, this is this has been a really fun one.
And guys, if you want to listen to another really fun episode, we just did recently episode 2273.
That was wacky English vocabulary for fun conversation.
So after you finish with this one, go on over and listen to that one.
Well, Michelle, what do you think is the takeaway today for our listeners?
Where should we leave them leave them in terms of connection?
What should we remember that this is all about storytelling?
Like you said in the beginning, this is not about oh, I have kids.
I can talk about this.
If you don't have kids, you can't relate.
We all were kids at one point in our lives.
Yeah, we've probably heard stories or remember things our friends used to say.
And I think it just shows.
It's a very sweet topic.
It's a very childlike and very touching thing to talk about.
It's that innocence of childhood that people connect with.
Yeah, I think that's a good point, Michelle.
That might be the key point there.
Once we get into this topic, there's no reason we couldn't branch into other things that we remember fondly about being a kid, right?
Because we're very different when we're kids and we're adults.
We just have so many different ideas about the world when we're kids.
And that right there, going into that kind of content could be really, really a bonding moment for whoever you're talking with.
Right. Absolutely. So I mean, I know I could just continue talking about it and talking about it.
Of course, it'd be fun to hear.
It's just it's definitely a great connection skill.
So and if you want to hear more ideas of things to talk about with your kids or things you can share definitely send us an email or comment on the YouTube video wherever you listen where we are happy to take your questions.
So yeah, and I would say just guys take a risk of branching out beyond the typical topics that you learn in class, which is what are your hobbies?
Right. What is your job?
This gets boring after what let's let's take a risk and open up something kind of quirky.
Right. This is inevitably very quirky, but it's how we find that deeper bond of connection in English.
I love that. Love it.
Well, thank you Barbara for that question and thanks for chatting about this with me today.
Lindsay. All right, Michelle.
I'll talk to you very soon.
Have a good one. All right.
All right, YouTube.
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