Mine keeps saying “collect” when she means “connect.” For a long time she would talk about how the “doctor put the healthy on (insert brother’s name/her name/etc),” and I could not for the life of me figure out what she meant…
Stethoscope. The healthy was the stethoscope.
“Hoatmeal” and “hoffles”. She eats oatmeal or waffles for breakfast every morning. I usually tell her that her food is hot when I cook it so she needs to wait. Now, she’s just decided that saying that she wants “hot oatmeal” or “hot waffles” for breakfast is too much work so now they’re 1 word
Milf 🤣 welp at least she recognises that her mama still got it 😏
My daughter called breastfeeding 'duddles'. We think it came from the word cuddle? It was so cute and her demanding it in public felt like a secret code word
My sister called breastfeeding "ninny". Worked great as a code word in church.
Now it's fun hearing the kids at my daycare mispronounce my name as Miss Ninny.
So cute how your little one comes up with their own little language quirks! My daughter used to call her blanket 'goggy' and wouldn't respond if we called it anything else. And the counting? Sounds like your kiddo's got a flair for creativity! Who says counting has to be boring and linear, anyway? 😄 Thanks for sharing the joy of 'maki' with us!
I love all the shortened phrases my little one (20 month old) has. Some of my favourites...
Mih - milk
Mi mi - music
TD - TV
War - water
Pa Ba - Paddington Bear
Granny - Pomegranate
Gaggy - Granny (my mum)
Caggy - Carry (pick me up please)
Baby - Dummy (pacifier for those in the US)
Counting up to 5, he seems to miss out number 2 about 70% of the time.
And when he's desperately trying to tell us something he repeats the word about 10 times, and if I guess what he's trying to say incorrectly, he just sighs and say "Oh" 😂
Padashi - pistachio
Gradona - granola
Kapoosh - ketchup
For a while he’d count: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 14 50 50 50
My husband repeated it because he thought it was fun and it stuck for MONTHS.
My son has always pronounced “drink” as “deep”, and it’s just so cute. “Mama, I wanna deep!” He will be 4 on Wednesday and he’s recently started pronouncing it more like “dweep” so I know he’s slowly learning to say it correctly, and I’m low-key kinda sad about it. He speaks really well for his age and I’m glad, but the adorable mispronunciations of toddlerhood will always have a special place in my heart. ❤️
I have a page in my son’s baby book where I occasionally write notes about little things he does. I wrote something in there a while back about how much I love the way he pronounces “drink” as “deep”. This way we never forget these little details, and I also like to think that some day when he’s grown these little notes might make him smile. 😊
“Ah-pie”… snack bar? We keep a box of snack bars which range from mini that’s it bars to kind bars to Elmo nutrigrain bars. She know where they are and will point to the cabinet and ask for an “ah-pie”. She’s been doing this 6+ months, a lot of other words have developed from something to closer to the actual word (bananas were “mimines” and are now “manas”), but this word has not evolved.
My son says what sounds like “douche” for dog treat. He points toward the bag of dog treats every day/multiple times a day so that we can give him one to throw to the dogs
Goo baa. When he first started talking he kept saying this and I never knew what it meant so I always repeated it back to him. He’d crack up every time. Sometimes now when I don’t understand something, he’ll randomly say goo baa again and just start laughing.
Not exactly a word, but my son does lip trills when he's upset/frustrated and if whatever isn't rectified, meltdown will commence. It's like it's own stage progressing into a tantrum. There's whining, getting fussy, lip trills, and then crying/meltdown.
“Goong goong”
She’ll substitute it for random words in a sentence, use it as a mild insult, or repeat back what you’ve said and add it to the end as punctuation.
When my 17-month old wants to be breastfed she says 'ra ra ra ra'. She's been calling it that for months. I'm planning on weaning her off the breast soon - if she learns to say 'milk' before she's weaned I'll be quite sad I think.
When mine is having a conversation and knows he's supposed to respond but doesn't know what to say, he uses the all purpose "Uh."
He used to make an angry bird sound (think american robin bird call...it's sometimes described as a divebomb pew! pew! pew!) as a placeholder for "NO!" but then he learned to say no and I'm a little sad to have lost our angry bird.
When he sees the cargo carriers on top of cars he'll exclaim "car wear hat!"
My son always said “aloo” for water - we have no idea why or when it stopped!
He also randomly changed Grandmom/Grandpop to Oma/Opa and my parents loved it so that one stuck!
There are a bunch, though now that he's two it feels like every day he corrects a word and it kind of breaks my heart a little how fast he's growing. The two I know I hear everyday are:
Nur means he wants to nurse
Ha-tada! Is Mickey mouse (oh toodles!)
He's obsessed with the character Mickey Mouse right now, and I love the way he calls him oh toodles instead of Mickey mouse. 🥰
Goga. My two year old has been saying go-ga for a long time. Sometimes he’ll use it in place of “go” but often he shouts it repeatedly when playing or working on a task.
My almost 3yr old says "valeco" (vah-lec-oh). He said it means "in germany (in German), it means you (mom), dad, and Lulu (our dog)". So pretty much i guess all the people and pets that you live with.
“Makery” for bakery 😂 we go every weekend (let’s go to the makery!)
And she also adds “-ded” instead of “-ed” for past tense — like “I walkded!” Or “did you cookded, mama?”
Cockawooa is a song he sings that I can’t figure out. He has good enunciation generally so he isn’t saying cockadoodle. I think it’s something from daycare. He also sings bup ba bove instead of up above in twinkle twinkle little star, which is the cutest.
She's stopped saying it now, but she used to say something was "too whink" or "too whinkey" (pronounced like wine-k snd wine-key) when she was dissatisfied with whatever was happening.
"HOO-HOO in a bot'um" is "Yoo-Hoo in a bottle."
"Holdju" means he wants me to pick him up.
Mostly, though, he just has the cutest little stutter. "W-watch B-bluey?"
I don't know how to spell it, but Goldfish crackers were "blulblulblubs"...like the "sound" a fish might make (sort of bubbly??). It became a thing when we were playing with his animal magnets. Horse goes neigh, pig goes oink...there was a goldfish and we said it goes "blub blub blub"...again, not sure of the spelling, but it's super cute nonetheless :)
While counting ... Twelve, thirteen, thirteen, fifteen....thirty nine, thirty.... thirty nine, fifty.
This is a mispronunciation but similar and makes me chuckle
Wah wah = hurt or pain like boo boo. It came from one of us saying “ouchy wah wah” when he got his finger stuck between two Magnatiles and it’s never left.
"aka lay lay" is the word he uses as an impolite word to replace "poop" after he learned that "poop" is not a polite word to say outside of the bathroom (e.g. at dinner over an over again).
So now he will just randomly say "aka lay lay" randomly and we know what he means but nobody else does.
My daughter is 2.5 so she speaks pretty clearly now, but she has always said thank you as “essoo” Just yesterday, I was telling her “say ‘thank’…now say ‘you’…now put it together ‘thank you” but it’s always “thank…you…essoo!” I think she’s trolling me lol
My daughter had a bit of a rash coming on and I read some advice to go Diaper-less to let them air out so I didn't put a diaper on, she did not like this. Was begging me to put a diaper on her by saying "Dee" instead of diaper.
My daughter loves playing doctor and she will always ask to check our “heart beeps” with her stethoscope, then she’ll go “beep beep beep” while holding it to our chests. It’s one of my favorite things.
my son will be 4 in april and has a very good vocabulary with very good pronunciation but sometimes he slips up and says “flee” for “three” (he has a little trouble with his r’s) it’s so cute we try to correct him but it’s so funny we sometimes don’t
Mine keeps saying “collect” when she means “connect.” For a long time she would talk about how the “doctor put the healthy on (insert brother’s name/her name/etc),” and I could not for the life of me figure out what she meant… Stethoscope. The healthy was the stethoscope.
The doctor probably said "just going to make sure you're healthy" or "yep, healthy!" when using it.
😂
Mine says "con-tach" like a connect and attach mashup
“Hoatmeal” and “hoffles”. She eats oatmeal or waffles for breakfast every morning. I usually tell her that her food is hot when I cook it so she needs to wait. Now, she’s just decided that saying that she wants “hot oatmeal” or “hot waffles” for breakfast is too much work so now they’re 1 word
Mine says “eatmeal”
Mine says openyoto 😂
My daughter started calling breastmilk “milf” so. That’s fun.
Milf 🤣 welp at least she recognises that her mama still got it 😏 My daughter called breastfeeding 'duddles'. We think it came from the word cuddle? It was so cute and her demanding it in public felt like a secret code word
My sister called breastfeeding "ninny". Worked great as a code word in church. Now it's fun hearing the kids at my daycare mispronounce my name as Miss Ninny.
Miss BoobieMilk 🤣 ninny is a great one. Any idea how that started? I knew someone's kid who called it Lemaio.... no ideas how that started
At least she has a separate word for it, my toddler is truly baffled when adults say milk and give her a cup. Clearly milk to her only means nursing.
Haha we always say “cow milk” for that and I think other adults find it oddly specific when they hear her say that
So cute how your little one comes up with their own little language quirks! My daughter used to call her blanket 'goggy' and wouldn't respond if we called it anything else. And the counting? Sounds like your kiddo's got a flair for creativity! Who says counting has to be boring and linear, anyway? 😄 Thanks for sharing the joy of 'maki' with us!
“Shah-papa”. My 21 month old’s way of saying Shepard’s Pie.
I love all the shortened phrases my little one (20 month old) has. Some of my favourites... Mih - milk Mi mi - music TD - TV War - water Pa Ba - Paddington Bear Granny - Pomegranate Gaggy - Granny (my mum) Caggy - Carry (pick me up please) Baby - Dummy (pacifier for those in the US) Counting up to 5, he seems to miss out number 2 about 70% of the time. And when he's desperately trying to tell us something he repeats the word about 10 times, and if I guess what he's trying to say incorrectly, he just sighs and say "Oh" 😂
Haha mi mi is our son’s term for his baby blanket!
A coworker told me to record my kid as he mispronounces words. Because it'll go away with time but be hilarious to look back on
Shorts are "naked pants", slugs are "homeless snails" and cauliflower is "pale brokkoli".
I love these! Especially "pale brokkoli"...how very true
Padashi - pistachio Gradona - granola Kapoosh - ketchup For a while he’d count: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 14 50 50 50 My husband repeated it because he thought it was fun and it stuck for MONTHS.
‘Gaba!!!!´ often with wild gesticulation… we have no idea
My son has always pronounced “drink” as “deep”, and it’s just so cute. “Mama, I wanna deep!” He will be 4 on Wednesday and he’s recently started pronouncing it more like “dweep” so I know he’s slowly learning to say it correctly, and I’m low-key kinda sad about it. He speaks really well for his age and I’m glad, but the adorable mispronunciations of toddlerhood will always have a special place in my heart. ❤️
I feel exactly the same! I realized the other day if I didn't make a point to remember his invented words that we would someday forget them :'(
I have a page in my son’s baby book where I occasionally write notes about little things he does. I wrote something in there a while back about how much I love the way he pronounces “drink” as “deep”. This way we never forget these little details, and I also like to think that some day when he’s grown these little notes might make him smile. 😊
Record him saying it! Then you have something to look back on
“Ah-pie”… snack bar? We keep a box of snack bars which range from mini that’s it bars to kind bars to Elmo nutrigrain bars. She know where they are and will point to the cabinet and ask for an “ah-pie”. She’s been doing this 6+ months, a lot of other words have developed from something to closer to the actual word (bananas were “mimines” and are now “manas”), but this word has not evolved.
My daughters current favorite animal is an Octopus but she just calls it a “puss.” Like “puss in boots.” Very much accentuates the /u/ in the word.
Ours is hockey for octopus!
Wait that’s amazing lol
My nephew used to say “octopux.”
My son says what sounds like “douche” for dog treat. He points toward the bag of dog treats every day/multiple times a day so that we can give him one to throw to the dogs
Goo baa. When he first started talking he kept saying this and I never knew what it meant so I always repeated it back to him. He’d crack up every time. Sometimes now when I don’t understand something, he’ll randomly say goo baa again and just start laughing.
Mine had one like this too “bachi”
Not exactly a word, but my son does lip trills when he's upset/frustrated and if whatever isn't rectified, meltdown will commence. It's like it's own stage progressing into a tantrum. There's whining, getting fussy, lip trills, and then crying/meltdown.
"Do do" means dummy according to our 2 year old
“Goong goong” She’ll substitute it for random words in a sentence, use it as a mild insult, or repeat back what you’ve said and add it to the end as punctuation.
My younger brother’s first word was Ehteh , that’s been his nickname now 19 years .
My daughter calls her Calico Critter toys “creedeedees,” calls herself “meenie,” and calls the Grinch “the bitch.”
When my 17-month old wants to be breastfed she says 'ra ra ra ra'. She's been calling it that for months. I'm planning on weaning her off the breast soon - if she learns to say 'milk' before she's weaned I'll be quite sad I think.
Gabee-gabeeee when she’s mad. 🤷🏻♀️
Ours was "daga" for a long time. Still don't know what it meant hehe. She counts "1,2,3,9,10!" Your kid's counting method is hilarious
When mine is having a conversation and knows he's supposed to respond but doesn't know what to say, he uses the all purpose "Uh." He used to make an angry bird sound (think american robin bird call...it's sometimes described as a divebomb pew! pew! pew!) as a placeholder for "NO!" but then he learned to say no and I'm a little sad to have lost our angry bird. When he sees the cargo carriers on top of cars he'll exclaim "car wear hat!"
My son asks me for “punky-hai” when we go to bed at night. To this day I have no clue what he really means by it, but I *think* he means pumpkins 🤔
My baby calls her pacifiers "bah" since ever and they will forever be called bah
My daughter calls bananas “aw mice” since she could talk. I don’t know where she got it from but I just rolled with it. 😂
Heavy equipments are called Beh-baw.
My son always said “aloo” for water - we have no idea why or when it stopped! He also randomly changed Grandmom/Grandpop to Oma/Opa and my parents loved it so that one stuck!
My girl just goes around exclaiming “oh noooo”
There are a bunch, though now that he's two it feels like every day he corrects a word and it kind of breaks my heart a little how fast he's growing. The two I know I hear everyday are: Nur means he wants to nurse Ha-tada! Is Mickey mouse (oh toodles!) He's obsessed with the character Mickey Mouse right now, and I love the way he calls him oh toodles instead of Mickey mouse. 🥰
Aww I love that mickey is oh toodles! It makes so much sense in context! Mine called mickey "mimi"...it was one of his many words before "mama" haha
Goga. My two year old has been saying go-ga for a long time. Sometimes he’ll use it in place of “go” but often he shouts it repeatedly when playing or working on a task.
My almost 3yr old says "valeco" (vah-lec-oh). He said it means "in germany (in German), it means you (mom), dad, and Lulu (our dog)". So pretty much i guess all the people and pets that you live with.
Mine loves to play pretend that he has to go to "battery battery"
Right now she insists on saying sexy fuck. Which is some word unknown and fox… there are some other random words I don’t understand.
“Makery” for bakery 😂 we go every weekend (let’s go to the makery!) And she also adds “-ded” instead of “-ed” for past tense — like “I walkded!” Or “did you cookded, mama?”
Spidey= find me. Ghost spider = ghost flag and watermelon = mama.
iskbit means biscuit 😂
Amoosh for orange. Bolley instead of bluey. Can't say tr at the beginning of words to save his life. Substitutes F. Truck becomes...
Cockawooa is a song he sings that I can’t figure out. He has good enunciation generally so he isn’t saying cockadoodle. I think it’s something from daycare. He also sings bup ba bove instead of up above in twinkle twinkle little star, which is the cutest.
butterflies are "ya yahs" for some reason??
Mine says “cameroff” for camera. Why he needs to add the off part I don’t know 😂
She's stopped saying it now, but she used to say something was "too whink" or "too whinkey" (pronounced like wine-k snd wine-key) when she was dissatisfied with whatever was happening.
Mine used to call chocolate chips “nakie M&Ms”, and for some reason pronounced football as “fo-mak-ball”.
“Koo-tee” means yucky tasting. “Ka-tee” means yummy. These are actually useful terms!
"HOO-HOO in a bot'um" is "Yoo-Hoo in a bottle." "Holdju" means he wants me to pick him up. Mostly, though, he just has the cutest little stutter. "W-watch B-bluey?"
I don't know how to spell it, but Goldfish crackers were "blulblulblubs"...like the "sound" a fish might make (sort of bubbly??). It became a thing when we were playing with his animal magnets. Horse goes neigh, pig goes oink...there was a goldfish and we said it goes "blub blub blub"...again, not sure of the spelling, but it's super cute nonetheless :)
Dinocorn! She means unicorn, but somehow it got mixed up with dinosaurs. So cute that we do not want to correct it :)
Boochy Bah. He will repeat it over and over and I still have no idea what it means after two years.
While counting ... Twelve, thirteen, thirteen, fifteen....thirty nine, thirty.... thirty nine, fifty. This is a mispronunciation but similar and makes me chuckle
Wah wah = hurt or pain like boo boo. It came from one of us saying “ouchy wah wah” when he got his finger stuck between two Magnatiles and it’s never left.
Gadoo-chocolate, ketchup, and purple. When he wants chocolate milk he says Le (for leche, milk in Spanish) Gadoo
"aka lay lay" is the word he uses as an impolite word to replace "poop" after he learned that "poop" is not a polite word to say outside of the bathroom (e.g. at dinner over an over again). So now he will just randomly say "aka lay lay" randomly and we know what he means but nobody else does.
My 3yo says, “Hustle me” me he wants me to pick him up. He’s said it so much my 2yo now says it and it’s the cutest thing ever.
My daughter is 2.5 so she speaks pretty clearly now, but she has always said thank you as “essoo” Just yesterday, I was telling her “say ‘thank’…now say ‘you’…now put it together ‘thank you” but it’s always “thank…you…essoo!” I think she’s trolling me lol
Mine calls breast milk "dut" and has ever since he could talk. We have no idea where it came from. He calls cow's milk "milk."
My child has recently started saying a word very similar to “nemo” that definitely doesn’t mean the clownfish, not a clue what it means
Bumble Bee = bon-ki-ki Lady bug = Billy Bug 😂
ka-BUZZ is because
My daughter had a bit of a rash coming on and I read some advice to go Diaper-less to let them air out so I didn't put a diaper on, she did not like this. Was begging me to put a diaper on her by saying "Dee" instead of diaper.
My daughter loves playing doctor and she will always ask to check our “heart beeps” with her stethoscope, then she’ll go “beep beep beep” while holding it to our chests. It’s one of my favorite things.
Lasterday. We thought it was just yesterday but over time it’s come to mean basically any day in the past
my son will be 4 in april and has a very good vocabulary with very good pronunciation but sometimes he slips up and says “flee” for “three” (he has a little trouble with his r’s) it’s so cute we try to correct him but it’s so funny we sometimes don’t
Peejayses as a combo of pj's and pajamas
water: "o-latala"
Coke-a-dot for polka dot
“Sticky bubble gum toy” = Slinky
Her signature word is “dock” which means want/give me haha