Re: CHAT: English is SO HARD, even the English can't speak it

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 08:34:02 -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote:

>With regard to childhood malaprops, "pasketti" for "spaghetti" seems
>to be quite common round these parts.
Also common in Finland. A medial consonant cluster is probably easier for
toddlers' mouths than an initial one.

BTW, on the topic of child-speak, my youngest cousin was
saying /suNNapaNNo/ for "sulkapallo" (badminton) at the age of about 3 -
interesting coalescence there... also, this only occured in this word, not in the
constituents by themselves or similar words, so both /lk/ and /ll/ may have
been necessary for this to occur. Maybe the assimilation process went along
sulkapallo > *sullkapallo > *suNNapallo > suNNapaNNo?

John Vertical