Anna has really been communicating lots and has developed some of her own language-use. She’s become a fan of reduplication, which is common linguistically in African languages, but I don’t think that’s where she started. When she’s really excited to see Dad, he’s “Daddy-Dad” or ecstatic “Daddy-Daddy!”

The phrase that elicited the most laughs of our Kenyan friends was coming to the kitchen and addressing our househelp, Josephine mid-morning: “Jovevine, [would you] make chai sooooooooooonnn!!!” Anna loves Kenyan chai (mostly milk and sugar) and we had to limit her and the boys to 2 cups per Sunday at church.

Some other Anna talk:
dee-bee-dee-bee (my personal favorite) = DVD
piggy-back-pack = piggy back ride
dramma = grandma
wee dame = Wii game
mote untole = remote control

Anna talk by Kimberly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International