all but Papa

An anonymous reader asked us, "why do you teach him sign language?"

Nathalie answered.

I'll just add that Garcia claims that a baby who learns ASL

1. shows the same advanced brain development as a bilingual child (only more so, since ASL takes place at least in part in an area of the brain not associated with spoken language); and
2. will develop a larger spoken vocabulary than his peers who never learned ASL.

But Benjamin's spoken vocabulary is exactly (as of yesterday) twice as large as his signing vocabulary: 24 signs and 48 spoken words. Has he lost some of the signs he once knew as he speaks more and signs less?

Tonight, without planning to, I tested him: to distract him from his now-regular post-dinner kvetchfest, I started asking him how to sign X … now how do you sign Y … and what's the sign for Z?

Of the 24 signs we have listed, he was able immediately to produce 23 … all but "papa."

- proud whatshisname

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PS I say that his spoken vocabulary was twice as large as his ASL vocabulary "as of yesterday" because tonight as we did his bedtime ritual, he said word #49: dodo — baby French for "sleep."