Pickle Nuts

I always find it interesting to listen to people and the words that they use. As an adult, the way I speak has been influenced, of course, by the people around me and by the work that I have done. However, I still use words that prompt people to say "that is totally something you would say" or "that so sounds like your kind of word".

I often think that the "colour" found in our conversations can be found in the words that describe, perfectly, what we are talking about but cannot be found in any dictionary. I like that we can still find ourselves able to inject colourful and descriptive words into our life and that we are not so "herded" and "moulded" that we can't use the occasional "shnick or niggle or dingle"

Children clearly take the cake with the colour of their chatter and I LOVE it...I have taken to writing down the things that both of my children have said so that I can remember, forever, the way our minds work before we hear "this is correct, this is incorrect". Some of my favourites are:

1) Dogpipes - This is what Sophie called Bagpipes; and why not? They do sound similar to some kind of animal being squeezed gently (or not so gently)

2) Yarden - This is what Sophie calls a yard that also contains a garden. This couldn't make more sense to me and I have now absorbed this term into my own vocabulary.

3) Pickle-nut- This is what Bridget calls the pickled onions you find in the jar of sweet pickles - and what a great sounding word that is. "I love those pickle-nuts"

4) Chickmunk - Of course it should be a chickmunk and not a chipmunk. What is a chipmunk, anyway?

I think I will take some notes when I am talking with friends and figure out which words really make me think of them. What colour do they play with in their conversations?