Mis-speaking with Tibbons

Language has so many forms, so many rules. There's a lot for a young person to learn.

T's speech is coming on leaps and bounds - but given the complexity of the spoken word, he doesn't always get it spot on first time.

No matter. He's having fun with it, and so are we. From shouting loudly in the park 'Mummy, Stick!' (worth noting here that T replaces the 'st' with a 'd') to some interesting takes on the word 'clock', I like to think he's spreading merriment with such slip-ups wherever we go. Unless the people of Brighton and Hove have a more sophisticated sense of humour than I do.

Recently, we asked T if he wanted to go swimming the next day. The answer turned out to be yes, immediately. Which is how we came to be 'swimming' on the bedroom floor. T was having a whale of a time and soon requested 'more swimming' - only it came out as 'more women'. Yes, we laughed.

And just yesterday, we were in a supermarket car park when, unsurprisingly perhaps, a car drove past. What did surprise me were the words that came out of T's mouth.

Unfortunately, they were delivered with the sort of vehemence usually associated with such an expression, and a finger-point, which rather added to the impression that he hadn't made a rookie error, but did in fact mean just what he said. The words in question? 'One car!' With a slight mispronunciation of one. I kid you not.

These examples aside, I often find T's versions an improvement on the textbook English and have been known to adopt them myself, adjusting my pronunciation to mimic his.

Why say 'banana', when you can say 'nar-mar', for instance? Quicker, quirky and much more fun.