Bus, no bus!

I was right about the language explosion. Ro is 19 months old and we are hitting that phase where more and more sounds are becoming available to him and he is starting to repeat words that we say. He is also starting to put together subject-verb phrases like 妈妈抱！(Pick me up, mama!) and 妈妈拜！(Bye mama!).

We have gotten into vehicles lately, as little boys tend to do. For a while, any vehicle that is bigger than a sedan was a bus. Firetruck? Bus! Excavator? Bus! Cement truck? Also bus. However, Ro has since learned that busses are bus and everything else is not a bus. But, he can only say “bus”.

So, when we encounter a large vehicle in a book, he will point to it and say “Bus!”. Then I will ask him, “那是bus吗?” (Is that a bus?) and he will say “No!”. He is now tired of me asking. He knows that the truck is not a bus, so, now he points to the truck and says, “Bus no bus!”

This week he learned a new word: 机器 (machine). Now construction vehicles are 机器, busses are bus, and other large vehicles are “bus no”. Small vehicles have no name. We have yet to say “car”.