Mushmouth

Say what you will about his recent (alleged) indiscretions or how his work has gone downhill over the years, in his heyday, Bill Cosby was a comedic genius. My father had a lot of vinyl records of various comedy sets that Cosby did (his tamer, family-friendly ones, at least) and I spent a lot of time just listening to them with headphones on, laughing away to myself at the antics of the Fat Albert Gang playing "buck buck" or the Chicken Heart which ate New York City (if you haven't heard that one, pick up a copy of "Wonderfulness" sometime).

A little less entertaining was Cosby's "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" show, a pleasant enough animated series featuring some of the characters from the old Fat Albert Gang plus a few new ones. One of the many eccentric characters in that series was "Mushmouth", a gangly speech-challenged kid who spoke in a strange gibberish language apparently called Ubbi Dubbi.

Daigoro is currently going through a "Mushmouth" phase. It's not exactly "Ubbi Dubbi" of course, but it's reminiscent of the same sort of gibberish. For example:

Me: "Daigoro, how are you today?"

Daigoro: "Train eshawna bayja wassa dursha train?"

Me: "Is that so? You want a train?"

Daigoro: "Ashla sho shasha truck unpalla shaw juice? Okay, mahi sholla nishaa kitty?"

Me: "Oh, something about the truck and juice and kitty?"

Daigoro (emphatic): "Yes." (nods head) "Sholla dursha ma shasha truck insh shasha truck rana shisha truck."

Now, this may sound like gibberish, but it's apparent (or at least it's a good fake) that Daigoro thinks he knows what he's saying. I haven't read or learned about child development enough to know what this is called, but I'm sure it's normal (it's pretty cute to boot). It's also apparent that Daigoro has a bit of a truck fixation, but that's another story.

When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that children can pick up speech at all. Of course nearly everyone does it naturally (some developmentally challenged children and other mental and physical impairments being obvious exceptions) - we're evolutionarily hard-wired for it. Take a moment to think about it, though. How many thousands of words do you know now? How many did you know, even as a young child? Think about how complex a concept even simple-to-say words like "love" or "afraid" can represent.

Right now, Daigoro strings together words like beads on a string of (apparently) meaningless syllables. What do those syllables mean to him, if anything? Or are they just practice, to give his tongue and his brain's speech centre the workout they need to wrap themselves around doozies like "she sells sea shells", "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick" or (many years from now, hopefully) "pheasant plucker".

I had a slight speech impediment when I was young - it was hard for me to get through certain words. Even today, I have to concentrate a little to say the word "synthesize". Speech is an amazing gift - not available to everyone. Fortunately, communication, in some form or another, usually is. Even as I smile a little inwardly at Daigoro's humorous "mushmouth" phrases, I have to marvel a little at the astounding complexity of human communication.