Her first word was "antidisestablishmentarianism"

[pne]

Amy said "ba" yesterday. It's the first time I recall hearing a consonant from her (except maybe voiced pharyngeal fricative or something like that, or was that merely "creaky voice").

She hasn't repeated it, though. Any phonations since then have involved only [a:].

Comments

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I'm just wondering what kind of household it would be if her first word was, indeed, "antidisestablishmentarianism"... but then, my youngest brother has repeatedly told me in the past not to floccipaucinihilipilificate him, so maybe I shouldn't talk.

Congratulations to Amy on her first consonant! Where there's one, there must be more. Keep us posted on her development!

[angelsk.livejournal.com]

cute!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Maybe her next one will be one of Ubykh's weird ones? I don't know, labialised pharyngeal ejective or something like that?

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Aww! I always love hearing about Amy's latest accomplishments!

[karteza.livejournal.com]

in Russian it means "granny", short from "babushka". Amy is russian!?!?!?!??! :o))))))

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

So, what does "floccipaucinihilipilificate" mean?

Google was no help.

[pne.livejournal.com]

It would seem to mean "to consider or make something worthless; to describe or esteem something as worthless" -- a back-formation from floccinaucinihilipilification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floccinaucinihilipilification), which should be easier to find.

Ah, I just saw that Da used "floccipaucinihilipilificate", but I believe that "floccipaucinihilipilification" is a variation of "floccinaucinihilipilification". (In both cases, based on Latin words for something unimportant or trifling; see the Wikipedia article. I believe "pauc-" is the stem for "few".)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oops, bad memory; it wasn't Da but rather Rohan who used the word.

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

Congratulations :)

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Well, she already knows how to say "if", so there's nowhere to go but up from here... :P

In my (limited) experience, kids produce an awful lot of consonants in the first year or so that they'll never produce later on in life, so the pharyngeal voiced fricative you may have heard doesn't surprise me much.

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Yep. I've seen both forms on webpages and such, but it's the [p]-variant that our family uses.

And I think this word was originally coined as a nonsense, but has gained some currency among sesquipedalians due to the fact that it's the longest non-technical word in the OED, at 29 letters, one more than antidisestablishmentarianism. (Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is longer, but it's a medical term.)