Lately it happens more and more often that I watch my daughter or actually I listen to her, when she is babbling around for half off the day. Or when she is reading something to me, but I just can't understand anything.
The main reason is, of course, that she is not yet 2 years old and does not want to get involved in speaking one of the languages I understand. Despite everything, she seems to have a lot to say, at least she's always yapping.
But so far I could not decipher which language she uses and how she got there. It is neither German, English nor Japanese, but as far as I can judge, a language with an enormous vocabulary and the most diverse possibilities of expression.
I wonder where she copied that from. Maybe from some of the other dwarfs at the play center, where she visits from time to time. Somehow the little ones seem to communicate with each other in a very magical way, even if things don't always run quite smoothly. Same as in our own lives when we "big ones" talk past each other on any given chance.
In all the millennia in which we walk on this planet, should we have missed that the youngest of us can already verbally communicate -all their opinions and thoughts, and all their wishes and dislikes- in a very sophisticated way? We all used to be at this age and in those situations, when did we forget this secret language?
Or has some new secret society been formed recently, aiming on starting a dwarf uprising to finally shed paternalism by us giants? And my little girl is just trying to warn me and save me from greater disaster?
In her voice there are often sounds of certainty and excitement, as if she would want to tell me something that really does not tolerate any further delay in time, but my undivided attention.
However, the desperation regarding this communication barrier seems to increase immeasurably on both sides. Especially from my daughter's side I can always hear some impatient growling and grumbling, which tells me that I am probably just too stupid to grasp what is going on here. At least at this point we seem to be able to express ourselves in an understandable way.