My 2 year old's Malayalam is all bath and bedtime. His food words are Telugu

orchid_hammock_815222 Oct 2026

Our son is 2. I speak Malayalam with him, and the caregiver who is with him through the day speaks Telugu. I worked out recently that his Malayalam covers almost exactly the parts of the day I do: kuli for bath, urangu for sleep, the bedtime story words. Everything to do with food is Telugu, because she does his meals. At dinner he asks me for annam, not choru. Not worried, more curious. My mother noticed on a video call and asked whether he even knows the Malayalam for rice. He does. He just doesn't seem to think it's for eating. On my WFH days I could take over lunch. Is that how you spread a language across the day, or did your kids' words stay sorted by person for a while and then mix on their own?

2 comments

quiet_hammock_932422 Oct 2026
Same split at our place with a 2 year old, only with English. His English is all daycare things, 'line', 'wash hands', 'tiffin', and almost none of it comes home. Do you get any meals with him on weekdays, or is it only dinner?
- orchid_hammock_815222 Oct 2026
  two wfh days a week, so lunch on those is possible. tried 'choru' at dinner today. he looked at the plate, looked at me, said 'annam'. so that's where we are
rose_river_924222 Oct 2026
Very normal from what I see at clinic. At 2 a lot of children have their words filed by person and by routine exactly like this, and they cross over as they get older. Taking one meal a week sounds like a nice low-effort experiment rather than a fix for a problem. Your mother's rice question, no fix for that, sorry 🤷