2 year old has a different word for banana depending on which adult she's asking

banyan_paper_772527 Oct 2026

With my parents it's 'pazham'. At daycare it's 'kela', which I'm told is how the akka there says it. With me it's 'nana'. With my partner she just points at the fruit basket and waits, which says something about my partner. Over the festival holidays a cousin's child the same age was rattling off English words, and my aunt started counting how many my daughter knows. Apparently not enough. I think she knows plenty, just spread across four people 🙂

2 comments

silver_piano_79828 Oct 2026
Counting words in one language undercounts a child who has three. When our son was small we did the opposite exercise, out of curiosity: wrote down every word he used in any language for a week. The list was far longer than the relatives assumed. It didn't end the comparisons, but it made us care a lot less about them.
- fennel_lantern_71728 Oct 2026
  My daughter did the same at 2. Hindi at home, English at playschool and a few Telugu words from our watchman. She's 5 now and mixes all three in one sentence. Nobody counts anymore, they just complain they can't follow her.
- amber_gecko_407329 Oct 2026
  Starting the list this week for ours. She's 10 months, so it'll be a short list, but ammamma insists one of the words is 'thatha' 🙂
hazel_veranda_851028 Oct 2026
Mine both did this. Tamil for the grandparents, English for school, and for a while a mixed version only for each other. By 4 or 5 it sorted itself out and they switched depending on who they were talking to, which is the skill you want. I'd just make sure she hears plenty of each and ignore the aunt with the tally.