“BEE-yah!” my 18 month old daughter used to consistently squeal when excited. I was baffled, thinking it was only gibberish, until I heard several of her same-age daycare friends repeat the identical nonsensical phrase, as if some sort of secret toddler code. It would be months later that I would discover not only the meaning of her utterance, but a key approach to resourceful practicing. It dawned on me— the children were audiblizing something very close to what they were hearing, the word “Yippee!” They were just repeating it backwards, because at this stage of language development, their memory retained what they heard LAST.
What I noticed later as her speech patterns matured over the succeeding months, was that she could learn multi-syllable words much faster if we taught her the last syllable first, and worked our way forward, “Community:” (Cum-mun-da-ditty…)
Tee. (Tee)
Nih-Tee (Nih-Tee)
U-Nih-Tee (U-Nih-Tee)
Cum-U-Nih-Tee (Cum-U-Nih-Tee)
Community…