Amy and the Regular Sound Correspondences

[pne]

Amy, on opening a Kinder egg: "Look! I've got a slimp!"

She meant a smurf, but kudos to her for deriving a word based on the German Schlumpf, Schlümpfe based on the regular pf = p (as in Apfel/apple, Pfennig/penny, hüpfen/hop, etc.) and schl- = sl- (as in schlafen/sleep) correspondences.

I'm not sure where the vowel came from; I can't think of a regular correspondence so perhaps she simply took the vowel of the German plural and unrounded it, since English has no front rounded vowels.

Comments

[pthalo]

fascinating :)

[conuly]

So... did you correct her, and ruin her hard work decoding, or did you tell her that yeah, it's a Slimp?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Well, I did what I usually do when her word isn't quite right (whether the wrong word, mispronounced, bad syntax or whatever): I repeated it, correctly, but without drawing specific attention to the fact.

So I probably said something like "Ah, yes, it *is* a smurf! I wonder which smurf it is - what's he called?"

(As opposed to, say, "No, it's not called a 'slimp'; it's called a 'smurf'.")

I suppose that still falls under "correcting her".

[conuly]

It's called "modeling" and is the Only Type Of Language Correction Officially Endorsed By... well, anybody, as near as I can tell :)

Slimp is a cuter word, though. I'd've stuck with it myself.