Emily Lofton's English Blog 2018

Chances are, if you've been in any kind of approximate vicinity to children (or animals, or...) then you've probably heard some form of Motherese, even if you didn't realize it at the time. First of all, what exactly is 'Motherese'? Simply put, it is that slow, often high-pitched voice caregivers (usually mothers and other older women, in my experience,) use to communicate with younger children. If you haven't seen it in real life, chances are decent that you've seen it in some form of popular media, used for comedic effect. This is because, simply put, after a certain point, it becomes annoying as hell.  Despite this, there are people who claim that it can greatly improve a child's language acquisition in the long run. But the question is, how true are those claims? The answer, according to this article , is... kinda? Maybe...?  Yeah, really, apparently the results of studies done on this very subject turn up inconclusive pretty consistently

So, in past posts I might have mentioned that my family and I sort of speak our own language. Here are just a few words and phrases pulled from our familial lexicon. Yiss/Yesh: Cutesy ways to say ‘yes’ pretty self-explanatory; often used in conjunction with other baby-babble-ish/cutesy words. Toe beans/ murder feets: Usually used when referring to our cat’s (sweet, dainty, and horrifically grody) feet. Murder Feet (s) refers to the foot as a whole, while toe beans refers specifically to her paw pads. Doggo/Pupper/Shoob/Sheeb/Corgo: From the meme-lish; all referring to dogs. ‘Doggo’ and ’pupper’ refer to the dog’s age group, while ‘Shoob’,’Sheeb’, and ‘Corgo’ all refer to particular breeds (Samoyed, Shiba Inu, and Corgi, respectively.) Bork: Dog noise. Can either refer to the deep noise produced by a larger dog or be used in a more general sense as a synonym for barking done by any kind of dog. Chi-Chi: Cheetah, especially a baby, adolescent, o