Baby Talk

Deborah   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 01:37 GMT
In another thread, I saw this sentence:

>>Ik krijg nog een antwoord van je Andre,want ik ga slapie slapie doen.... <<

I assumed that "slapie slapie" is baby talk for "sleep".

What are some common baby talk terms in your language? I'm interested in the ways the words are modified to make them into diminutives, for instance. In English we frequently add -ie, or double a word, so we can tell the child to "go beddie-bye", and "good night" becomes "night-night". Diapers used to be (and maybe still are) called "didies". (These are from the US.)
Deborah   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 01:43 GMT
By the way, that first sentence is either Dutch, Afrikaans or Flemish -- I'd lost track by the time it came along. Can someone enlighten me?
sw yank   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 07:22 GMT
The Chinese double up every other word. 'Xiexie, mama, baba, gege, chang chang, etc etc.' Babies.
Deborah   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 08:03 GMT
One of the principal dancers in the San Francisco Ballet is named Yuan Yuan. Is the double name an indication that it's sort of an affectionate or baby name, or is that a usual form of a woman's name?
Leonard   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 08:48 GMT
Where did the word "diaper" originate, and did it have an earlier meaning? So far as I know, the rest of the English-speaking world calls such things "nappies", presumably a diminutive of "napkins".
Deborah   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 09:16 GMT
Here's what the Online Etymology Dictionary says about diaper:

c.1330, from O.Fr. diapre "ornamental cloth," from M.L. diasprum, from Medieval Gk. diaspros, from dia- "entirely, very" + aspros "white." Aspros originally meant "rough," and was applied to the raised parts of coins (among other things), and thus was used in Byzantine Gk. to mean "silver coin," from which the bright, shiny qualities made it an adj. for "whiteness." Modern sense of "underpants for babies" is continuous since 1837, but such usage has been traced back to 1596.

(I still don't see how a word for "ornamental cloth" could come to be used to mean "underpants for babies".)
Deborah   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 09:24 GMT
One Britishism I like that we don't use in the US is "walkies", for walking the dog. Is it used in the rest of the English-speaking world, too?
Anna   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 09:44 GMT
I don't know for sure, but I'd assume it's not so unusual for the Chinese to have "double names". At least when I was in elementary school all the kids from China had names like that: Duo duo, One one, Chin chin (I'm not sure about the spelling).

I also find this baby talk culture interesting. I'm studying to become a speech therapist and we just recently discussed this topic at school. Unlike some people think it's been studied that baby talk or motherese is actually very usuful for the child. When mothers use baby talk they often use shorter and concrete sentences, exaggerate their facial expressions, talk in a higher voice and vary the intonation, volume, pauses etc a lot more than in normal speech, the sentence structure is simpler, they use gestures and eye contact more, repeat the important words and so on. This all makes it easier for the child to learn new words.

Here in Finland there are many different types of baby talk words. Comon features are that they usually simplify the pronunciation and/or the conjugation. Often the words that have diminutive forms are words for family members, animals, body parts, greetings, toys and other comon objects at home and food. Here are some ways to form diminutives:

1. -liini äiti (mother) -> äitiliini tyttö (girl) -> tytteliini

2. -kka nalle (bear, teddy bear) -> nallukka

3. -kki isä (father) -> isukki suu (mouth) -> suukki

4. Many diminutives have two syllables and end in a vowel (often -o or -u) peukalo (thumb) -> peukku nenä (nose) -> nenu (nenukki) porsas (pig) -> possu maha (stomach) -> masu jänis (rabbit) -> jänö kissa (cat) -> kisu silmä (eye) -> simmu etc.
Many of these kind of forms are also used by adults in normal speech, so they're not necessarily so clearly baby talk words anymore. For example lelu (toy) is actually a diminitive form of leikkikalu, but the latter is really rarely used these days.

Like I said many of these forms are used because they simplify the pronunciation and/or the conjugation (though I think hardly anyone is concious about this, I certanly hadn't thought about it before). So for example possu is a lot easier to say than porsas, because it doesn't have that consonant cluster (rs) which are difficult to pronunce.
The conjugation of possu is also a lot easier:
pig pig's (partitive case) plural
porsas porsaa+n porsas+ta porsa+i+ta (the stem changes)
possu possu+n possu+a possu+ja (the stem doesn't change and the suffixes are more regular)

Also
eye eyes in the eye(s)
silmä silmä+t silm+i+ssä (ä disappears)
simmu simmu+t simmu+i+ssa (u stays) etc.
Deborah   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 10:19 GMT
Thanks, Anna! When I started this thread, I never expected to learn anything about Finnish.

>>Often the words that have diminutive forms are words for family members, animals, body parts, greetings, toys and other comon objects at home and food.<<

My brief experience of staying with a couple of Russian families was that they do the same. I also noticed in a documentary about the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg that the teacher of a first-year class (10-year-olds) kept using diminutives when talking about body parts. She always said "golovka" rather than "golova" (head). The subtitles said "little head," which I don't think quite conveys the right meaning. But I guess that's as close as you can get, since we don't have a diminutive form of head in English (that I'm aware of).
Francisco   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 13:22 GMT
I'm Argentinian, so my variety of Spanish may be representative of a really large group of people and countries.

Firstly, we tend to use diminutive words when talking to children. In Spanish, these sort of words are not difficult to make, and may be used in thousands of contexts, too. Yet, the incidence in baby talk is much greater.

Eg.

Face = cara > Little face can be: carita/ carica (according to the countries)
Foot= pié > little foot : piecito / piececito
Baby-bottle= mamadera/ biberón. In Argentina : la mema, la meme, la mamaderita.
andre in south africa   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 13:47 GMT
Deborah

>>Ik krijg nog een antwoord van je Andre,want ik ga slapie slapie doen.... <<

This sentence is in Dutch
andre in south africa   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 13:48 GMT
in afrikaans it would read "ek gaan nou slapies" (baby talk)

Allthough some Dutch say all Afrikaans is baby talk!! :)
Sander   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 16:10 GMT
Ive always wondered...

Sometimes the germans say to their children,when they want to know if it needs to pie, "pipi machen?" but is this baby talk or does pipi mean (I don't no a more subtile word) to piss?
Sander   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 16:14 GMT
In dutch baby talk is widespread...

A car in "baby" becomes a "toet toet" (litt. honk honk,after the sound the horn of a car makes)

And a cat becomes a "mauw mauw" (after the sound a cat makes)

A dog becomes a "waf waf" (the dutch barking sound)

Do you have the same thing in english (or other languages)?
andre in south africa   Sunday, April 03, 2005, 16:22 GMT
afrikaans

car =wroem-wroem
cat = kietsie
dog = woef-woef (afrikaans dogs bark differently than dutch ones!!)