The Power of Babble versus the Tower of Babel

Before we left, Becky introduced us via email to Ezio Paroni. From meeting us at the airport to walking me through the line at the Post Office to pay my electric and phone bills today, he has been invaluable. He and his beautiful wife Virginia lived in the States for 10 years, speak perfect English, and are both Milanese, meaning they have a special, sophisticated sense of style (much like myself, I must admit). They have become good friends already.

Ezio comes over twice a week to help Susan with her Italian. He helps me with mine every day, but in an unstructured way. For some reason Susan would like to speak both fluently and correctly. Go figure.

Mirella has taken a strong liking to Ezio. Each time he visits she helpfully reminds him of the names of her animals: "Daw, daw, daw, daw" for dog, "Duh, duh, duh, duh" for duck, and so on. If Ezio could just convince her that he understands she could move on to other topics.

Mirella is sixteen months old. I think this is the peak babbling age. Her language is about 20% recognizable words and the rest a stream of eloquent but unrecognizable sounds. Today, I was holding her as Ezio was speaking to us in slow, clear Italian. All of a sudden, Baby Girl's babble switched cadence and accent and became very noticeably Italianate. Susan and I both noticed instantly and burst out laughing. A very funny moment that pointed out how quickly babies learn language at this age.

We don't expect her to remember much (although she does return a friendly "ciao" to her many Italian friends), but research says that the brain connections she keeps between her ears and her mouth may remain. It will be fun to see, or rather, to hear.