Learning Words Before You Know How to Pronounce Them

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Nancy Gabriel wrote to us from Ithaca, New York, to say that her daughter was a precocious reader as a child.

When her little brother was two-ish and she was not quite six, she said that her brother was a Sanofogon.

Oh, oh, I got it.

Do you know what it is?

Yes, but tell me more about the story.

Okay, well, her parents were baffled.

Her daughter said that she called him a Sinophagon because he was being naughty.

She got it from one of her books, I bet.

It’s a word she learned from reading, I bet.

Yep, yep.

Do you know the word?

Son of a gun.

Yes.

She just put the stress in the wrong places.

Yeah, yeah.

Bless her heart.

Yeah, and then when Nancy’s daughter was in second grade, she and a couple of naughty classmates went into their little town’s corner store.

And the plan was for these two naughty kids to go into the store and swipe some candy, and Nancy’s daughter would stand watch outside.

Well, the little kids got caught, all of which Nancy found out because her daughter came home really upset and eventually confessed that she was worried that her friends were going to have her record.

She must have been a very precocious reader for sure.

That happens to all of us, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Synophagin.

What a synophagin of a story.

Thanks, Nancy.

Oh, I appreciate the kids’ stories.

You know, they keep coming every time we bring them up.

Every family has them.

The funny things that kids say, and they are a delight to read and to share on the air.

Share yours, 877-929-9673, or email them to words@waywordradio.org, or heck, share them with the world on Twitter @wayword.