[Ads-l] Children's speech errors; 3 examples

James A. Landau JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM
Wed Sep 12 18:01:14 UTC 2018


On Wed, 12 Sep 2018 00:13:53 Zone+0800 W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>In the beginning was the landline telephone. Our kids learned to say
><telephone> as one of their first words. Then, lo and behold, the family
>acquired the cell phone. For a few weeks, the twins were saying
>[SELL-a-phone] for the new device. Don't know why it never caught on.

I heard an Isreali, speaking in Hebrew on her cell phone, say "cellophone" for "cell phone".
She immediately realized her mistake and looked around, embarrassed, at several English-speakers 
who had caught her mistake.  (The proper Hebrew for "cell phone" is something like "telefon selitza".)

- Jim Landau

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