Our lovely boy has reached a rather exciting stage of his linguistic development: it seems like every day brings a new word or phrase. This evening we solved a mystery of the last week or so: what does “badidon” mean? (Fair warning: this post may not be exciting to you unless you’ve also been through this phase with your own kids. And maybe not even then.)

So it started with Manu lying on the floor and saying happily “Ba-di-don! Ba-di-don!” We’ve puzzled about this before, with no conclusions. This time Olga had an idea: maybe he was singing “ding dang dong” from Frère Jacques?1 The wikipedia page doesn’t list the Greek version, but that’s what Olga has been singing: Η καμπάνα του χοριού μας / την ακούτε παιδιά; / Τι γλυκά σιμαίνει: ντιν νταν ντον. (Literally “The bell of our village / do you hear it, kids? / How sweetly it rings: din dan don.) She sang the first line, and looked at Manu to check if that’s what he meant… and he sang the second line back to her!

Cue much cooing and amazement from the proud parents, of course. But there was better to come: after we’d gone through the song a couple of times (Manu is still very unsure of the exact words, and fades out on the second half: he’s not a complete prodigy, which is something of a relief to be honest) we had to admit that this couldn’t be what “ba-di-don” meant, so we asked Manu again. This time he had an answer: “άλλη ντιν νταν ντον” (the other din-dan-don). And then the light dawned.

Olga and I have been singing this song as a bilingual round. “The other din-dan-don” is the English version, “Are you sleeping… Brother John.” And indeed, when I started in on it, Manu delightedly repeated “ba-di-don” a few times to confirm the guess. (I think this also explains how he started in on it. He was lying on the floor: “Are you sleeping?”)

So tonight’s linguistic innovation includes: cuing us to sing him a song (unsuccessfully); singing along, when we did get the idea, in two languages; and directing us to the song he meant with a completely novel, but completely compositional, sentence of his own invention. And he is only 18 months old. Colour me impressed.

Notes:

  1. Incidentally, we were mucking about putting this song in a minor key the other day, and I realised that a very small change of spelling turns the English version into a tragedy: “Are you sleeping, Brother John? Mourning bells are ringing…” [↪]