It struck me when I began this series that one of the puzzle pieces in vocabulary development for the non-native speaker/writer is the infancy and childhood experience of nursery rhymes and lullabies.
The nature of such material is phonetic, and the objectives multiple.
However, primary objectives include either soothing or entertaining the child [depending on if is it sleep time or play time, which translates to learning time for language skills], along with language exposure.
As a consequence, the composers of these ditties typically use a rhyming structure. With lullabies, and later childhood games like jump rope songs, this may be combined with a musical foundation as well, which makes it a multi-sensory experience that further supports development of language skills.
As anyone who has experimented with writing verse can attest, creating a rhyming structure can pose its challenges to the writer/composer.
Because of that, we find words in some nursery rhymes that are peculiar or unusual.
Let’s look at a few traditional such rhymes.
Diddle Diddle Dumpling
Diddle Diddle Dumpling
My son John
Went to bed
With his breeches on
One stocking off,
And one stocking on.
Diddle, diddle dumpling,
My son John.
This verse has only one occurrence, “breeches.”
The Wikopedia entry on this nursery rhyme actually uses the word “trousers” rather than “breeches.”
Well, the language is always evolving, and I don’t know too many men who any longer regard themselves as wearing “trousers” let alone “breeches.”
But, what happens, here? The baby, and on well into childhood, hears this nursery rhyme over and over, and the word “breeches” or “trousers” as an article of men’s clothing [typically today known as “slacks”] naturally over time becomes a part of that infant’s working vocabulary.
Thus, “breeches” would be part of my working vocabulary, but I would not use it in writing to refer to a garment worn by a man unless I was writing historical fiction.
Cross Patch, Draw the Latch
Cross Patch, Draw the Latch
Sit by the fire and spin,
Take a cup and drink it up,
Then call your neighbors in.
This nursery rhyme is old enough for the first two lines to be quoted in “Little Women,” published in the 1860s or so.
Again, we have usages that are not often called for in modern English.
We no longer “latch” our doors, we lock them. And while we use “spin” in modern English, more likely we refer to the spin cycle on a washing machine than we do to spinning fibers on a spinning wheel as this verse refers to.
Yet, native English speakers exposed to this nursery rhyme will have working vocabularies that include those uses of the words “latch” and “spin.”
Little Miss Muffet
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
A child who heard this rhyme over and over would include the today rarely used words of “curds,” “whey,” and “tuffet” in his/her working vocabulary.
Curds and whey are words that coming back a bit, thanks to the popularity of cottage cheese and similar foods. But, for the most part, those kinds of words are rarely used in ordinary English usage today.
Little Boy Blue
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He’s under the haystack, fast asleep.
Here we find two words rather advanced for infancy, and not much needed in most English-speaking parts of the world today because most of the population no longer has an agrarian lifestyle.
But, a child who heard this verse from infancy would have the words “meadow” and “haystack” incorporated in his/her adult working vocabulary.
As someone who rides horses when possible, I can think of occasions I would use “meadow” in writing or communicating in speech to someone. But I can’t think of circumstances when I would want to use “haystack” in such a way.
A Dillar, a Dollar
A dillar, a dollar
A scholar.
What made you come so soon?
You used to come at ,
But now you come at .
Here again, “scholar” is a word not so much called for today. More often, we will refer to those in a formal education program as pupils or students today.
Yet, a child who hears this rhyme from babyhood will easily call upon the word “scholar” during adulthood when circumstances call for it. In this particular instance, the influence may well become derivative: as a child gets into the education years geared towards entry into post-high-school academic institutions, the awareness of the word “scholar” will assist the young person in understanding words such as “scholastics” through the process of association.
Along with those exposure deficit challenges the adult learner has to overcome, there are also some cultural associations conveyed through the early language learning experiences that may increase the difficulty of learning proper usage of the vocabulary once the adult learner captures the actual word as a part of that individual’s working vocabulary.
But the cultural challenges are matters for other entries.
The point, for this entry is that the early exposure in the entertainment context of nursery rhymes to words that would ordinarily fall outside the “age appropriateness” quotient of a pre-school child acts towards building a foundation of both a strong actual and a strong working vocabulary in a way that the non-native speaker of English cannot duplicate.
The best such a learner can do is understand the factors, and try to find the most efficient way to create an exposure environment that provides the best learning potential for each individual student in that situation.
References:
Note: All quoted nursery rhymes are old enough to be in public domain, so I have only referenced the most pertinent references I looked at; although I did review several others.
No comments:
Post a Comment