In which Amy speaks Japanese

IIRC, Japanese hai means not yes as in English, but "the assumptions of your question are correct".

This makes a difference when you ask a negative question; if you have problems carrying something and someone asks you, “Can’t you carry it?”, the usual answer in English is, “No[, I can’t]”, whereas Japanese would use “Hai[, you are correct: I can’t]”.

Amy, on the other hand, tends to answer such negative questions with, “Yes,” which is a bit unexpected.

I'm a Amy!

Amy doesn't use "a" or "an" depending on the following word; instead, she uses "a" all the time, even if the next word starts with a vowel sound.

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In other news, she's started using "one" in German in some cases where it would be used in English, for example, "Ich möchte die eine mit der Ente" = I want the one with the duck (normally just "Ich möchte die mit der Ente"). Mostly, this seems to be where the article or demonstrative is used; she doesn't seem to use it after adjectives (e.g. "I want the blue one" but "Ich möchte den blauen"; I don't think I've heard *"Ich möchte den blauen einen" from her).

Rotary-dial phones

Prompted by seeing Amy playing with an old rotary-dial phone she got from her grandparents, and seeing that she didn't know what to do with the dial (she only picked up the receiver and talked). No wonder, since I doubt she's seen one before, and it's likely she won't be seeing (m)any in the future, either.

(Funny that the little icon for "phone" used in various places is nearly always a rotary-dial one, though!)

[Poll #1170050]