A few years ago a co-worker went to night school to get her degree in English. (For those who need inspiration, she was over 50 at the time.) Terri and I had some great discussions about language being alive and how English evolves and adapts.

For instance, a few centuries ago “ain’t” was considered acceptable and Evelyn was a masculine name, not feminine (so was Shirley, btw). The T in “often” was pronounced until the 17th century, when educated speakers made it silent. But people started pronouncing often the way it is spelled so much that now the T sound is considered acceptable again. (Don’t get me started on names being spelled phonetically, like Antwan instead of Antoine. Grr.) “Ain’t,” however, is still non-standard.

Words evolve from being two separate words, to hyphenated, to one word. Determining which stage a word or phrase is at has caused many a hair-pulling session with critique partners, copyeditors and contest judges. Does my duke reside in a town house or townhouse? Does he sleep in a bed chamber, bed-chamber, or bedchamber?

Raising a toddler, I hear language evolving on a daily basis. Years ago I saw an actress on a talk show describing how she was teaching her infant son the American Sign Language sign for milk and a few other words, and how it made life easier for all parties. How cool, I thought. If ever I have a kid, I’m going to teach him sign language, too. I’ve always thought babies are like blank computer hard drives in that they’re born with full intelligence in place, and simply lack data. Their comprehension of speech is much greater than most people think, and they can make hand signs long before they can coordinate tongue and lips to form words.

When Daniel was six months old, I began using the signs for Eat, More, and Milk every time I used the words. My mom and husband gave up after a few months but I kept at it. Our preemie was behind in hitting physical milestones like sitting up but I was certain the intelligence was there. And I was frustrated trying to decipher his “feed me” cry from change me/hold me/I’m teething/I’m tired/I have gas/I’m-bored-and-want-to-yank-your-chain cries. His spoken vocabulary was limited to Mama and Dada – sweet but not very helpful in most situations.

I learned that hearing kids who sign as babies and toddlers tend to have a larger vocabulary and higher IQ when they start school, and have an easier time learning overall. There’s something significant about engaging more parts of the brain as they hear, speak, *and* move their hands to communicate. My dad and brother are both dyslexic and struggled in school. I want to stack the odds in Daniel’s favor as much as possible.

After eleven months my efforts paid off. On December 17, shortly after waking up from a nap, he put his fingers to his mouth in the sign for Eat. About ten seconds later he made the sign for More. Within a month he used five signs, in three months he had a dozen, and in just the last month he’s doubled that. (Eat and More are still his favorites and most frequently used.) At his 18-month checkup our pediatrician said Daniel was ahead of the curve in vocabulary. I tried not to be obnoxiously proud.

Between spoken and signed, he now has over 50 words. Signs often help clarify what he wants because he sometimes mixes up the sounds and/or leaves off the last sound. He’s learning to say Sock but often starts it with a K sound. (Yeah, try keeping a straight face on *that* one.) A favorite bedtime snack is cheese, which he can ask for clearly. But one night he started throwing the cubes on the floor in frustration. Turns out what he really wanted was peaches. So now we confirm what he’s asking for by speaking *and* signing the word.

As his vocabulary expands we’ve encountered a new problem, that of explaining words that sound alike but have different meanings. For example, a lion says roar but when we speak the name of the yellow flowers growing in the lawn that make Daddy say bad words, Daniel says “Roar!” (Several of his words are animal sounds – maybe we sing Old MacDonald too much.) A Dr. Seuss alphabet book shows a lollipop, but we can’t read that page aloud without Daniel asking for a drink of pop. And poop is the result of going potty, is smelly and needs to be cleaned up. But this nice-smelling liquid for washing your hair is called shampoo? And where do we begin with Winnie the Pooh…

On the bright side, we’re still years away from trying to explain the drive-on-a-parkway, park-on-a-driveway nonsensical side of English.