Re: Conlang baby-talk

En réponse à Sally Caves <scaves@...>:

> it
> seemed utterly ridiculous to me: "come here, my little choo choo train."
>  I
> knew it wasn't logical (the cat in no way behaved like a steam engine or
> a
> train).  Later I wondered if it was an extension of French "chou,"
> "mon
> chou," which often gets extended to "chou chou"-- which in an
> Anglophonic
> environment could get extended to "choo choo train."  Christophe could
> probably expand on this!
Well, the French onomatopoeia for "train" is indeed "Tchou tchou" /tSutSu/, but
I would never have connected it to "chouchou" /SuSu/ ;)) . Count on English-
speaking people to do strange things like that ;))) . Note that "chouchou" has
a "gnangnan" /Ja~Ja~/ (yep, another onomatopoeia :)) ) feeling to it, i.e. it
does sound childish, but in a negative way. It's not very well seen to
reduplicate "chouchou". But "(p)'tit chou" or "mon chou" are OK :)) .

  What is French baby talk like?
>
Well, the usual ;))) . We have a lot of onomatopoeia-like words, like "guili-
guili" /giligili/ or "guidi-guidi" /gidigidi/ for tickling, "ouah-ouah" /wawa/
for "dog", reduplicated syllables, like "dodo" for "sleep" (from "dormir". The
expression "faire dodo" is the usual baby-talk for "dormir") or "lolo"
for "lait": "milk". The cliche of children without teeth having difficulties to
pronounce sibilants leads to replacement of /S/ by [s], [s:] or even [T:]!
(so "le chat", normally [l@'Sa] becomes [l2:'sa], [l2:'s:a] or even [l2:'T:a] -
note that in baby talk, article vowels are often lengthened too, while
pronounced with a stupid smile or exaggerating the facial expression ;)) -).
Clusters get simplified (my sister called me "Tita" /ti'ta/,
then "Titof" /ti'tOf/ for years :)) ), the melodic curve takes precedence over
the actual contents and lots of nonsense talk is heard (full of reduplications
and often modifications of otherwise known onomatopoeia,
like "goudougoudougoudougoudou" /gudugudugudugudu/), sentences tend to begin
with the 3rd person singular of the "to be" verb in the *imperfect* tense when
talking to the baby (like "Il était un gentil garçon !": "he was a nice little
boy" or even "c'est qu'il était mignon tout plein !": "it's that he was cutey-
cutey" - near literal translation, the expression "tout plein": "all full"
added after an adjective to mean "very" is also typical baby talk -. Of course,
it must be uttered with a stupid smile, while showing to your neighbour how
your child is the most beautiful in the world, the nicest, the most
intelligent, etc... ;)))) ). Of course, the higher the voice and the stronger
the melodic curve, the more childish the baby talk sounds :)) .

> I called my cat "pooch" for a while, because she acted so much like a
> dog.
> This got changed to "booch," and then to "boochous,"
Funny, "bouchon" ("cork") is also baby-talk word, equivalent to "chou" :)) .
Would there be a universal around? :))

>
> I've been trying to make up a Teonaht lullaby, with nonsense words and
> extensions upon hwendl, which means "infant," "baby."  Hwendl-wet,
> ywet
> ywet. Edrimaf, hal wendl!  That's as far as I've gotten.
>
Strangely enough, French lullabies don't contain such non-sense words. They do
contain baby-talk words (like "dodo", of course ;)) ), but only the meaningful
ones. And contrary to most baby-talk, they are usually in correct French ;)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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