From Out of the Mouth of Babes--Some New Definitions

How children learn language is a mystery to me. Here they are, born into culture where words fall all around them like rain. How do they distinguish one from another?

Even before they go to kindergarten, where formal teaching begins, they speak and know the meanings of many words. Obviously, they learn some through instruction and demonstration. When they’re riding down a road, they’re told it’s a road.

Probably the first word children learn is no .

But I suspect that mostly children learn by textual inference. That is, they hear a word among other words, and they guess its meaning from its relation to the whole. If a parent tells them, “Beware the dog--he bites,” they already know dog and bite , and they guess that beware means watch out for.

However, textual inference can be very unreliable. It often produces hilarious misunderstandings.

Every year about this time, I am favored with a list of definitions produced by the pupils in Joan Maturko’s kindergarten class at Jefferson School in Redondo Beach.

Mrs. Maturko’s method is probably not very scientific. She simply reads a word and asks her pupils to define it as best they can. The answers are oral, since most of her pupils can’t yet write. They demonstrate both the miracle of language and its pitfalls.

A similarity of sounds may lead some pupils astray. Year after year, for example, a few pupils define debate as what their fathers fish with. One pupil defined zucchini as a girl’s bathing suit. Another, not unreasonably, defined adore as “you can close it or open it.”

Some definitions are apt and succinct. Acorn is defined as “a nut that squirrels eat.” A dictionary could hardly do better. In fact, the American Heritage College Dictionary defines acorn as “the fruit of an oak, consisting of a single-seeded, thick-walled nut set in a woody, cup-like base.” In other words, it’s a nut that squirrels eat.

Abstract social concepts are always difficult for children. Marriage inspires some oversimplifications as well as some unerring insights: “When somebody is getting married to somebody else.” “You really like someone, then you love him and then you get married.” That pupil evidently was a girl.

Bachelor seems harder to grasp: “Kind of like a bat.” “A little bashful.” “A bachelor party.”

Sadly, modern technology seems to have displaced simpler meanings. The children defined banquet , for example, as “It’s when you stand out at the ready teller.” “It’s the bank.” “You go to the bank and get money.”

Evidently, most of Mrs. Maturko’s pupils have never been to a banquet. They should consider themselves fortunate never to have endured this boring institution. (The most boring of all is a bachelor banquet.)

The children know almost as much about the brain as I do. “It helps you think.” “It’s something inside your head.” “It’s so your head can stay on.”

Two definitions for cheap are right on the mark: “You don’t have to pay a lot of money.” “Something doesn’t cost a lot of money and when you take it home it breaks.” That second one is especially good since it neatly encompasses two meanings of the word.

The difficulty in defining abstract words is plain in the children’s definitions of jealousy . “Someone is doing something specialer than the other person.” “You’re jealous of sharing your toys with somebody else.” “You’re shy.” “You want to be prettier than somebody.” The last one may not be a sophisticated definition, but it tells you what jealousy means.

For fun, the pupils say what is fun, rather than what fun is. “You’re playing and you’re having lots of fun.” “When people are running all around.” “Sliding down the slide.” “Making friends.” “You’re being happy.” (Today, of course, fun is an adjective, as in a fun time .)

Perhaps the children haven’t been immersed in it enough to know what education is. “Information.” “You’re smart.” “You’re falling off a cliff.”

To some children, I suppose, education may seem like falling off a cliff, but I suspect that that pupil simply didn’t associate the word with the process.

A fascinating definition to me is “Nothing’s fair,” for equal. Perhaps that pupil has heard some debate on television about equal rights and naturally supposes that whatever equal rights is, it isn’t fair.

Finally, embarrass is defined as “When somebody sees you in the bathtub.” That’s succinct and to the point. Certainly you’re embarrassed when somebody sees you in the bathtub.

Unless, of course, it’s someone you love and want to get married to.

Being seen in the bathtub is special, but being seen by someone you love is specialer.