Verbal Diarrhoea

This time last week Abigail was just recovering from a 24 sickness bug and I was it's unsuspecting recipient in a few hours time! Thankfully it was an instant 'get it and get rid of it' thing and Mark and Naomi were completely unaffected.

As a result of the bug and the recovery, Abigail was a little quieter than normal. At the beginning of last week she wasn't all that chatty. A fact that she totally made up for by the end of the week ... when we seriously had trouble stopping the talking!

She would read any book, making up all the words and going on and on about all kinds of random things. At bedtime we have taken to leaving her with a book now until she decides to go to sleep otherwise we will never escape from her bedroom! Then go back in later and tuck her in properly!

In the daytime, Abigail was running around the house picking things up, talking about them ... seeing something else talking about it ... cuddling Naomi, talking about her ... a true one woman monologue. She didn't even seem to draw a breath when saying 'and then' which is often the only link between sentences as the subject matter is usually totally unrelated!

It was highly amusing most of the time, just wondering what on earth she would come up with next. The diagnosis at the end of the week, totally different from the one at the beginning ... Verbal Diarrhoea!

If the spelling of diarrhoea confuses you, it is the British spelling and not the American one. As we've found with so many words since living in the States, spellings can differ, pronunciation can differ or words can be totally different from one 'language' to another.

I've mentioned before some of the differences when we go to the store/shop (delete as appropriate!) and the fact that the girls are growing up surrounded by both versions of English. I find myself using American English more and more ... it really is like learning a new language. 

Last week a friend of mine working in Turkey posted a link to the most amazing and extensive 'Glossary' of British English words and their American equivalents that I have seen to date. I'm still slowly making my way through the page ... but so far I can see just quite how much language learning I've had to do since we moved to America! Even if you just look at a couple of the words it's well worth a quick glance to see just how different the two languages are!!