September 22, 2001 - Saturday
It seems Harry is starting to understand about plurals. He doesn't have it down yet, but he's getting the idea.

This afternoon Harry happened to pick up a book from the living room coffee table and immediately started pointing at and identifying the "Os" in the book's title. "On the Day You Were Born," an old favorite which hasn't been out in a while, has three "Os" and Harry handily rattled them off in succession, "o, o, o." I counted them out loud. "1, 2, 3 Os," I said and Harry went right into his own silly counting act, which included far more random digits than the actual three Os. But, then he receded into a hint of seriousness and pronounced that there were indeed "many Os" on the book's front. Only, he didn't say it quite like that. In trying to be a little more deliberate, he said "many Os's," doubling the "s" sound.

I'd actually been thinking about plurals lately - along with tenses, multi-person verb conjugations, and other English oddities - thinking what difficult concepts they must be for someone just starting out. Unknowingly, I suspected these details of language would probably come much later as Harry's speech became more sophisticated. So, I was rather surprised at his attempt, however awkward. I quickly smiled, chuckled a bit to myself, and told Harry he was right, there were many Os's in the title.


Comments, opinions?