Chukovsky Korney
From two to five
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky
Chapter one. Children's language
I. I listen
II. Imitation and creativity
III. "Folk etymology"
IV. Effectiveness
V. The Conquest of Grammar
VI. Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults
VII. Exposing cliches
VIII. Masking Ignorance
IX. Misinterpretation of words
X. Children's speech and people
XI. Speech education
Chapter two. Tireless explorer
I. Search for patterns
II. Half-belief
III. "One Hundred Thousand Why"
IV. Children about birth
V. Hatred of the beginning
VI. Children about death
VII. New era and children
VIII. Tears and tricks
IX. I keep listening
Chapter three. Fight for a fairy tale
I. Conversation about Munchausen. 1929
II. "There are no sharks!"
III. It's time to wise up! 1934
IV. And again about Munchausen. 1936
V. Philistine methods of criticism. 1956
VI. "It is unnatural that..." 1960
Chapter Four. Stupid absurdities
II. Timoshka on a cat
III. Child's attraction to changelings
IV. Pedagogical value of shifters
V. The Ancestors of Their Enemies and Persecutors
Chapter five. How children compose poems
I. Attraction to rhyme
II. Verse pick-ups
III. Pa and Ma
IV. First poems
V. About poetry education
VI. Ekikiki and non-ekikiki
VII. More about poetry education
VIII. Before and now
Chapter six. Commandments for children's poets
I. Learn from the people. - Learn from children
II. Imagery and effectiveness
III. Music
IV. Rhymes. - Structure of verses
V. Refusal of epithets. - Rhythmics
VI. Game verses
VII. The Last Commandments
Notes
Great-granddaughter Mashenka
It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. During all this long term I have never been separated from the children: first I had the opportunity to observe spiritual development their own young children, and then their grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific accuracy of his material, I consider myself obligated to document every children's word, every childish phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name by name all the friends of my book who share with me their observations, thoughts, and information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
Chapter one
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such things as, for example, children’s speeches and exclamations overheard in different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll be yours sewing machine twirl!
Georges used a spatula to cut the earthworm in half.
Why did you do this?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here’s a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “he asked the fish for something new home, then a new trough. I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
How dare you fight?
Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
Nanny, what kind of heaven is this?
And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries are...
I understand: heaven is compote.
Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
The woman washes her face with soap!
A woman doesn't have a muzzle, a woman has a face.
I went and looked again.
No, still a little snout.
Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
I’m not crying to you, but to Aunt Sima.
Will you water the cone too?
To make the little ones grow?
Chukovsky Korney
From two to five
Great-granddaughter Mashenka
It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. Throughout this long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name all my friends by name. books sharing with me their observations, thoughts, information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
Chapter one
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges used a spatula to cut the earthworm in half.
Why did you do this?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “begging the fish for a new house, then a new trough. I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
How dare you fight?
Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
Nanny, what kind of heaven is this?
And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries are...
I understand: heaven is compote.
Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
The woman washes her face with soap!
A woman doesn't have a muzzle, a woman has a face.
I went and looked again.
No, still a little snout.
Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
I’m not crying to you, but to Aunt Sima.
Will you water the cone too?
To make the little ones grow?
We, adults, assign the ending “yata” only to living creatures: lambs, piglets, etc. But since for children even nonliving things are alive, they use this ending more often than we do, and you can always hear from them:
Dad, look how cute these cars are!
Seryozha, two and a half years old, first saw a fire spitting with bright sparks, clapped his hands and shouted:
Fire and Ogonyata! Fire and Ogonyata!
I saw a painting of the Madonna:
Madonna and Child.
Oh, grandpa, the pussy sneezed!
Why didn’t you, Lenochka, tell the cat: good luck?
And who will thank me?
Philosophy of art:
I sing so much that the room becomes big and beautiful...
It's hot in Anapa, like sitting on a primus stove.
You see: I’m all barefoot!
I'll get up so early that it will be too late.
Don't put out the fire, otherwise you won't be able to sleep!
Listen, dad, a fantasy story: once upon a time there was a horse, its name was Kicking... But then it was renamed because it didn’t kick anyone...
He draws flowers, and there are three dozen dots around.
What is this? Flies?
No, the smell is from flowers.
What did you scratch yourself on?
About the cat.
At night he wakes up a tired mother:
Mom, mom, if a kind lion meets a giraffe he knows, will he eat her or not?
What a terrible sponge you are! So that it gets up now!
Lyalechka was sprayed with perfume:
I'm so smelly
I'm all so stuffy.
And spins around the mirror.
I, mommy, am beautiful!
When will you play with me? Dad got home from work and got to the book now. And my mother is such a lady! - I started washing right away.
The whole family was waiting for the postman. And then he appeared at the very gate. Varya, two and a half years old, was the first to notice him.
Postman, postman is coming! - she announced joyfully.
They boast while sitting next to each other on chairs:
My grandmother keeps swearing: damn, damn, damn, damn.
And my grandmother keeps swearing: goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi!
Yura proudly thought that he had the fattest nanny. Suddenly, while walking in the park, he met an even fatter woman.
This aunt is behind you,” he said reproachfully to his nanny.
I once heard a wonderful child’s word at a dacha near St. Petersburg on one cloudy May day. I lit a fire for the children. From a distance, a two-year-old neighbor girl crawled up impressively:
Is this all fire?
Everyone, everyone! Come, don't be afraid!
The word seemed so expressive to me that at the first minute, I remember, I was ready to regret why it did not become “everyone”, did not enter into “everyone’s” use and did not supplant our “adult” word “universal”.
As I see a street poster:
THE WHOLE WORK ON THE WHOLE EARTH
IN THE NAME OF ALL HAPPINESS!
Chukovsky Korney
From two to five
Great-granddaughter Mashenka
It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. Throughout this long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name all my friends by name. books sharing with me their observations, thoughts, information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
Chapter one
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges used a spatula to cut the earthworm in half.
Why did you do this?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “begging the fish for a new house, then a new trough. I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
How dare you fight?
Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
Nanny, what kind of heaven is this?
And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries are...
I understand: heaven is compote.
Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
The woman washes her face with soap!
A woman doesn't have a muzzle, a woman has a face.
I went and looked again.
No, still a little snout.
Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
I’m not crying to you, but to Aunt Sima.
Will you water the cone too?
To make the little ones grow?
We, adults, assign the ending “yata” only to living creatures: lambs, piglets, etc. But since for children even nonliving things are alive, they use this ending more often than we do, and you can always hear from them:
Dad, look how cute these cars are!
Seryozha, two and a half years old, first saw a fire spitting with bright sparks, clapped his hands and shouted:
Fire and Ogonyata! Fire and Ogonyata!
I saw a painting of the Madonna:
Madonna and Child.
Oh, grandpa, the pussy sneezed!
Why didn’t you, Lenochka, tell the cat: good luck?
And who will thank me?
Philosophy of art:
I sing so much that the room becomes big and beautiful...
It's hot in Anapa, like sitting on a primus stove.
You see: I’m all barefoot!
I'll get up so early that it will be too late.
Don't put out the fire, otherwise you won't be able to sleep!
Listen, dad, a fantasy story: once upon a time there was a horse, its name was Kicking... But then it was renamed because it didn’t kick anyone...
He draws flowers, and there are three dozen dots around.
What is this? Flies?
No, the smell is from flowers.
What did you scratch yourself on?
About the cat.
At night he wakes up a tired mother:
Mom, mom, if a kind lion meets a giraffe he knows, will he eat her or not?
What a terrible sponge you are! So that it gets up now!
Lyalechka was sprayed with perfume:
I'm so smelly
I'm all so stuffy.
And spins around the mirror.
I, mommy, am beautiful!
When will you play with me? Dad got home from work and got to the book now. And my mother is such a lady! - I started washing right away.
The whole family was waiting for the postman. And then he appeared at the very gate. Varya, two and a half years old, was the first to notice him.
Postman, postman is coming! - she announced joyfully.
They boast while sitting next to each other on chairs:
My grandmother keeps swearing: damn, damn, damn, damn.
And my grandmother keeps swearing: goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi!
Yura proudly thought that he had the fattest nanny. Suddenly, while walking in the park, he met an even fatter woman.
This aunt is behind you,” he said reproachfully to his nanny.
I once heard a wonderful child’s word at a dacha near St. Petersburg on one cloudy May day. I lit a fire for the children. From a distance, a two-year-old neighbor girl crawled up impressively:
Is this all fire?
Everyone, everyone! Come, don't be afraid!
The word seemed so expressive to me that at the first minute, I remember, I was ready to regret why it did not become “everyone”, did not enter into “everyone’s” use and did not supplant our “adult” word “universal”.
As I see a street poster:
THE WHOLE WORK ON THE WHOLE EARTH
IN THE NAME OF ALL HAPPINESS!
The expressiveness of a child’s word “angry” is also great. Three-year-old Tanya, seeing the wrinkles on her father’s forehead, pointed her finger at them and said:
I don't want you to be angry!
And what could be more expressive than the excellent children's word laughter, meaning repeated and prolonged laughter.
My mouth felt sour from self-indulgence and laughter.
Three-year-old Nata:
Sing me a song, Mom!
"Bayulnaya song" (from the verb "to lull") is an excellent, sonorous word, more understandable to children than " lullaby", since in modern life cradles have long become a rarity.
I repeat: at first these children’s sayings seemed simply funny to me, but little by little, thanks to them, many things became clear to me. high quality child's mind.
II. IMITATION AND CREATIVITY
CHILDREN'S SENSE OF LANGUAGE
If we needed the most visual proof, intelligible to everyone, that every young child is the greatest mental worker on our planet, it would be enough to look as closely as possible at the complex system of those methods with the help of which he manages to master his native language, all shades of its bizarre forms, all the subtleties of its suffixes, prefixes and inflections.
Although this mastery of speech occurs under the direct influence of adults, it still seems to me one of the greatest miracles of childhood. mental life.
First of all, it is necessary to note that two-year-old and three-year-old children have such a strong sense of language that the words they create do not at all seem like cripples or speech freaks, but, on the contrary, are very accurate, elegant, natural: “angry”, and “dull”, and “pretty” and “everyone”.
It often happens that a child invents words that are already in the language, but unknown to him or to those around him.
Before my eyes, one three-year-old in the Crimea, in Koktebel, invented the word bullet and fired from his tiny gun from morning to night, not even suspecting that this word has existed for centuries on the Don, in the Voronezh and Yaroslavl regions. In L. Panteleev’s famous story “Lenka Panteleev,” a Yaroslavl resident says several times: “That’s how they shoot, that’s how they shoot!”
Another child (three and a half years old) came up with the word worthless on his own.
The third, of unknown age to me, invented the words obutki and odetki (this was in the Black Sea steppe near Odessa), completely unaware that these two words in exactly the same combination existed for centuries in the north, in the Olonets region. After all, he had not read the ethnographic collections of Rybnikov, who wrote down a certain folk tale, which, by the way, contained the following words: “I receive food, shoes and clothes as promised.”
This very two-part formula “shoes and clothes” was independently created by the child on the basis of the linguistic prerequisites given to him by adults.
Oh, dragonfly! - the mother said to her three-year-old Irina.
I'm not a dragonfly, but I'm a people!
At first the mother did not understand this “people,” but then she accidentally discovered that a thousand kilometers away, in the Urals, a person has long been called a “people.” This is what they say there:
Thus, the child sometimes independently comes to those forms that were created by the people over many centuries.
It wonderfully masters the children's mind with methods, techniques, and forms of folk word creation.
Even those children's words that are not in the language seem almost to exist: they could exist, and it is only by chance that they do not exist. You meet them like old acquaintances, as if you’ve already heard them before. One can easily imagine one of the Slavic languages, where angry, nikovoiny, and vsehny exist as full-fledged words.
Or, for example, the word diving. The child created it only because he did not know our adult word “diving”. While bathing in the bath, he said this to his mother:
Mom, give the command: “Get ready to dive!”
Nyrba is an excellent word, energetic, sonorous; I would not be surprised if one of the Slavic tribes found the word diving in everyday use, and who would say that this word is alien to the linguistic consciousness of the people who created the word walking from the word walk, from the word mowing - mowing, from the word shoot - shooting, etc.
I was informed about a boy who told his mother.
Give me a thread, I'll string beads.
This is how he interpreted the words “string on a thread.”
Having heard from some boy that a horse had hoofed him, at the first opportunity I inserted these words into a conversation with my little daughter. The girl not only immediately understood them, but did not even realize that they were not in the language. These words seemed completely normal to her.
Yes, they are like that - sometimes even more “normal” than ours. Why, in fact, do they tell a child about a horse - a horse? After all, a horse is huge for a child. Can he call her by her diminutive name? Feeling all the falseness of this diminutive, he makes a horse out of a horse, thereby emphasizing its enormity.
And this happens not only with his horse: for him, a pillow is often a podukha, a cup is a chakha, a dandelion is a dandelion, a comb is a comb.
Mom, look, the rooster is without a comb.
Wow, what a raw food we found!
There’s such a toy in the window on Liteiny!
The son of Professor A.N. Gvozdev called a large spoon - loga, a large mouse - mykha:
Give me another log!
What a mouse!
Natasha Shurchilova calls mom's sandals: barefoot.
In all these cases, the child acts in exactly the same way as Mayakovsky did, forming the form puppy from the word puppy:
With all my puppy strength
UNCONSCIOUS MASTERY
By reinterpreting our words, the child most often does not notice his word creation and remains confident that he is correctly repeating what he heard.
He had just heard the word brake - and, thinking that he was repeating it, he attached the ending silt to it.
This was a revelation for me: such a tiny boy, but how subtly he felt that the suffix “l” was needed here, showing the tool, instrumentality of the object. The boy seemed to say to himself: if what you use to sew is called an awl, and what you use to wash is called soap, and what you use to dig is called a snout, and what you use to thresh is called threshing, then what you use to slow down is slowing down.
This one word testified that in the child’s mind such a clear classification of suffixes into categories and headings was made, which would have presented considerable difficulties even for a warmed mind.
And this classification seemed all the more wonderful to me because the child himself does not even know about it.
Such unconscious verbal creativity is one of the most amazing phenomena of childhood.
Even those mistakes that a child often happens to make during this creative assimilation of speech testify to the enormous amount of work his brain does to coordinate knowledge.
Although the child could not answer why he calls the postman a postman, this reconstruction of the word indicates that for him the role of the Old Russian suffix nik, which characterizes a person mainly by his professional work - fireman, sportsman, shoemaker, collective farmer, stove maker - is almost completely noticeable. By calling the postman a postman, the child included his neologism in the category of these words and did quite correctly, because if the one who works in the garden is a gardener, then the one who works at the post office is indeed a postman. Let the adults laugh at the postman. It is not the child’s fault that strict logic is not followed in grammar. If our words were created according to one straightforward principle, children's sayings would not seem so funny to us; they are often “more correct” than grammar and “correct” it.
Of course, in order to perceive our language, a child copies adults in his word creation. It would be wild to think that he in any way creates our language, changes its grammatical structure, its vocabulary.
Without suspecting it, he directs all his efforts to, through analogies, assimilate the linguistic wealth created by many generations of adults.
But he applies these analogies with such skill, with such sensitivity to the meaning and significance of those elements from which a word is composed, that one cannot help but admire the remarkable power of his intelligence, attention and memory, manifested in this difficult everyday work.
The slightest shade of each grammatical form is guessed by the child on the fly, and when he needs to create (or recreate in his memory) this or that word, he uses exactly that suffix, exactly the ending that, according to the hidden laws of his native language, is necessary for a given shade of thought and image.
When three-year-old Nina first saw a worm in the garden, she whispered in fear:
Mom, mom, what a creeper!
And with this ending, uk perfectly expressed her panicked attitude towards the monster. Not a creeper, not a creeper, not a creeper, not a creeper, but certainly a creeper! Of course, this crawler was not invented by a child. There is imitation of such words as beetle and spider. But it’s still remarkable that for a given root small child in an instant I found in my arsenal of various morphemes exactly the one that was most suitable in this case.
Two-year-old Dzhanochka, bathing in the bath and making her doll dive, said:
Here it sank, and here it drowned!
Only the deaf and dumb will not notice the exquisite plasticity and subtle meaning of these two words. Drowning is not something like drowning, it is drowning for a while in order to eventually emerge.
And three-year-old Yura, helping his mother outfit little Valya for a walk, pulled out boots, galoshes, stockings and gaiters from under Valya’s bed and, handing them over, said:
That's all Valino put on his shoes!
With this one general word “shoes” he immediately designated all four objects that were related to shoes.
Just as expressively magnificent is the word splash, composed by a five-year-old boy:
We had a good swim. They made such a splash!
The same sense of language was demonstrated by that village child of five and a half years old, who, having heard that adults called the primer a textbook, and imagining that he was exactly reproducing their term, called this book “uchilo”: obviously, uchilo (as in “sharpening machine”, “ threshed, chisel, etc.) is a teaching tool for him. And the suffix nickname eluded the child, since he could not find any analogy with “washbasin”, “bush”, “teapot” in the word “textbook”.
Another child, who called the salt shaker a salt shaker, was also more than right: if the container for tea is a teapot, and the container for sugar is a sugar bowl, then the container for salt is not a salt shaker, but a salt bowl.
Here, again, the child’s speech coincides with the folk one, for, it turns out, the word solnitsa is as widespread in the villages as bullet, potato, beard and other words that I saw independently created by three-year-old children, brought up far from the influences of the “common people.” speech.
By the way, I note that such words created by a child as “dandelion”, “syroega”, “laughter” exist in some places among the people.
In general, it seems to me that starting from the age of two, every child becomes a brilliant linguist for a short time, and then, by the age of five or six, loses this genius. In eight-year-old children there is no trace of it anymore, since the need for it has passed: by this age the child has already completely mastered the basic riches of his native language. If such a flair for verbal forms did not leave the child as he mastered them, by the age of ten he would have eclipsed any of us in the flexibility and brightness of his speech. No wonder Leo Tolstoy, addressing adults, wrote:
“[A child] understands the laws of word formation better than you, because no one invents new words as often as children.”
Take, for example, the word “still,” which belongs to the category of unchangeable words. In addition to the verb “to tickle,” which we will talk about later, the child managed to produce a noun from the word “more,” which he subordinated to the laws of declension of names.
Two-year-old Sasha was asked:
Where are you going?
Behind the sand.
But you already brought it.
I'm going for more.
Of course, when we talk about the creative power of a child, about his sensitivity, about his verbal genius, although we do not consider these expressions to be hyperboles, we should not forget that (as mentioned above) the common basis of all these qualities is imitation, since every new word created by a child is created by him in accordance with the norms given to him by adults.
But he does not copy adults as easily (and not as obediently) as it seems to other observers. Below, in the section “Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults”, a sufficient number of facts will be presented to prove that a child already from the age of two brings critical assessment, analysis, and control into his perception of speech.
A child acquires his language and thinking skills only through communication with other people.
Only this communication makes him a person, that is, a speaking and thinking being. But if communication with other people had not for a short time developed in him a special, increased sensitivity to the speech material that adults give him, he would have remained until the end of his days in the field of his native language as a foreigner, soullessly repeating the dead cliches of textbooks.
In the old days I happened to meet children who various reasons(mainly at the whim of rich parents) the vocabulary and structure of a foreign language, most often French, were imposed from infancy.
These unfortunate children, from the very beginning cut off from the elements of their native speech, did not speak either their own or someone else’s language. Their speech in both cases was equally anemic, bloodless, lifeless - precisely because, from the ages of two to five, they were deprived of the opportunity to master it creatively.
The one who is in early childhood on the way to mastering his native speech, he did not create such words as “creeper”, “sink”, “sink”, “slowed down”, etc., he will never become a complete master of his language.
Of course, many neologisms of a child often indicate only his inability to master at first certain deviations from the norms of grammar characteristic of generally accepted speech. Another speech “created” by the child, which seems so original to us, arose, in essence, only because the child too straightforwardly applies these norms to words, without realizing any exceptions. All this is true. And, however, the child’s enormous speech talent is undeniable for me.
It consists not only in the classification of endings, prefixes and suffixes, which he, imperceptibly for himself, produces in his two-year-old mind, but also in the guesswork with which, when creating a new word, he selects the model he needs to imitate. Imitation itself is a creative act here.
K.D. Ushinsky also wrote:
“You are involuntarily surprised by the instinct with which he [the child. - K.Ch.] noticed an unusually subtle difference between two words, apparently very similar... could this have happened if the child, while learning his native language, had not learned particles of that creative force that gave the people the opportunity to create a language? Look at how difficult it is for a foreigner to acquire this instinct of a foreign language; and can a German ever live in Russia for twenty years and not even acquire that knowledge of a language? has a three-year-old child!"
THE GREATEST WORKER
It’s scary to think what a huge variety of grammatical forms are pouring down on a poor child’s head, and the child, as if nothing had happened, navigates all this chaos, constantly classifying the random elements of the words he hears into categories and at the same time not even noticing his colossal work.
An adult's skull would burst if he had to master in such a short time the multitude of grammatical forms that a two-year-old linguist so easily and fluently masters. And if the work he performs at this time is amazing, even more amazing is the unprecedented ease with which he performs this work.
Truly, a child is the greatest mental worker on our planet, who, fortunately, does not even know it.
I just said that, according to my observations, by the age of eight, such a sophisticated sense of language becomes dull in a child. But it does not follow from this that he speech development suffers damage in any way. On the contrary: having lost his recent ability to create those unique verbal forms that we talked about, he compensates for the loss a hundredfold with new valuable qualities of his linguistic development.
“At this time,” says Professor A.N. Gvozdev, “the child already masters to such an extent the entire complex system of grammar, including the most subtle patterns of syntactic and morphological order operating in the Russian language, as well as the firm and unmistakable use of many isolated singular phenomena that the acquired Russian language becomes truly native to him. And the child receives in it a perfect tool for communication and thinking."
Of course it is. There is no doubt about this. The child's linguistic work is now moving onto new tracks. Using the results obtained in the previous period, the child equips himself for more complex and varied verbal communication.
The period of word creation is left behind them, but knowledge of their native language has already been firmly conquered by them. Now, on the threshold of school, they are faced with a new task: to realize and comprehend theoretically what, from the ages of two to five, they instinctively learned in practice. They cope with this most difficult task excellently, which could not have happened if in the eighth year of life their speech talent had died out completely.
This is true, but only partly. The fact remains unshakable that the process of mastering speech occurs at the fastest pace precisely between the ages of two and five. It is during this period that the child’s brain undergoes the most intensive development of generalization of grammatical relations. The mechanism of this development is so expedient and wise that you can’t help but call that little kid whose mind systematizes so many grammatical schemes in such a short time a “genius linguist.”
It has long been established that at the age of about a year, a child’s vocabulary is counted in units; by the end of the second year it reaches two hundred and fifty three hundred words, and by the end of the third year it reaches a thousand, that is, immediately, in just one year, the child triples his vocabulary, after which the accumulation of words occurs more slowly. The same applies to the grammatical forms that the child masters at that time. I once tried to make an approximate count of these shapes. I got at least seventy of them. And all these “generalizers” that form in the child’s brain once and for all, for the rest of his life, appear in greatest numbers between the ages of three and four, when the child’s linguistic talent manifests itself with particular force.
III. "FOLK ETYMOLOGY"
I once happened to overhear several wonderful children's speeches, which clearly showed the method by which a child, imperceptibly for himself, comprehends our “adult” speech.
Three-year-old Mura ran up to me and said:
Mom asks for mazeline!
What mazeline?
It turned out that she was sent to bring Vaseline. But Vaseline is a dead word for her, and on the way from room to room she imperceptibly revived it and made sense of it, since for her the essence of Vaseline is that it is an ointment that can be applied.
Another child, for the same reason, called lipstick- lipstick.
My friend Kirill, two and a half years old, just as successfully revived and interpreted an incomprehensible word. When he was sick, he kept repeating:
Put some cold mocress on my head!
He vaguely heard the incomprehensible word “compress” and, thinking that he was repeating it, not at all wanting to innovate, he created a new one, quite consistent with his understanding. He seemed to say to himself: this is a wet rag, why isn’t it wet? After all, the baby does not know the Latin word “compressio” (compression), from which “compress” comes.
One four-year-old girl, instead of the word “thermometer,” said either heat meter or thermometer, unconsciously translating this word into Russian and at the same time maintaining its former appearance.
The other, instead of “loop,” spoke catchily, being in the firm belief that she was repeating what she had heard, and not creating something new. A chain is much more expressive: something with which you cling to a hook.
The child to whom I showed mercury running on a saucer had the same understanding of an incomprehensible word:
Uncle Chukosha brought us vertutia!
Everyone laughed, but someone said:
Why are you laughing? After all, it's spinning. So, vertutia.
Mom, I saw a car with a rising belly. (A great interpretation of the word "body".)
Busya (of unknown age to me) aptly called the dentist's drill a big machine, and it is curious that children from orphanage, who had to visit the dentist, gave the drill the same nickname.
The charming word kusarik is typical in this regard. This is what Lelya called the cracker, which for a child is not remarkable for its dryness, but precisely for the fact that it can be bitten. What kind of cracker is he? He is a bitch.
And four-year-old Tanya Ivanova said:
Take me, mom, to the cowherd.
To the cowlicker?
It was not without difficulty that the mother guessed that the hairdresser was the hairdresser who cut her hair.
Indeed, why mark in the language such activities of our barbers, which are now unusual for most of them? Wigs went out of use in the 18th century, and “wig makers” are now preserved mainly in theaters and clubs, while the rest have turned into cowlickers, whose purpose is to trim our curls.
In most cases, children only strive to copy their elders as accurately as possible. But, trying to reproduce our “adult” speech in all accuracy, they unconsciously correct it, and, I repeat, the virtuosity with which, changing only the sound in a word they hear, they force this word to obey their logic, their sense of things, is amazing.
Mom’s heart hurt, and she drank Boleryanka.
In a word, if a child does not notice a direct correspondence between the function of an object and its name, he corrects the name, emphasizing in this word the only function of the object that for the time being he managed to discern. Thus, we are convinced again and again that the development of a child’s speech is a unity of imitation and creativity.
As soon as two-year-old Taraska learned the word “hammer,” he made a mallet out of it. I touched only one “letter” in it, and as a result the whole word broke away from its former root and, as if nothing had happened, began to grow on another. What is a hammer for a child? Random combination of sounds.
The child unconsciously demands that the sound has meaning, that the word has a living, tangible image; and if this is not the case, the child himself will give the unknown word the desired image and meaning.
Its fan is a vertilator.
A web is a spider's web.
A spring is a mug.
A policeman is a street policeman.
A gimlet is a hole maker.
An excavator is a sand excavator (because it scoops out sand).
The recipe is a trailer (because it is attached to a medicine bottle).
Everywhere there is the same method of comprehending the words heard by unintentionally substituting a minimum number of sounds. Hearing two verses from “Moidodyr”:
And now brushes, brushes
They crackled like rattles...
my three-year-old daughter, who had never heard the word “ratchet,” tried to comprehend it with the help of this transformation:
And now brushes, brushes
They started chattering like three women.
Four-year-old Natasha acted even funnier in a similar case. She heard her neighbor's song:
Whether you're a matchmaker or not,
I still love you...
and sang it the next day to her doll:
Even you with cotton wool, even without cotton wool,
I still love you.
UNDERSTANDING SPEECH WITH NONSENSE
It happens that the pursuit of meaning leads a child to pure nonsense. Hearing, for example, a song that began with the words:
King of trembling creation,
the child reproduced it like this:
The king, trembling from jam.
This wild phrase was much more meaningful for the child than the one he heard from adults.
In one Persian fairy tale, the princess says to the groom:
Lord of my soul.
Three-year-old Ira heard this tale and retold the princess’s exclamation in her own way:
Plasticine of my soul.
The mother is combing four-year-old Luda's hair and accidentally tugs at her hair with a comb. Luda whines, ready to cry. The mother says in consolation:
Be patient, Cossack, you will become an ataman!
In the evening, Lyuda plays with the doll, combs her hair and repeats:
Be patient, goat, otherwise you’ll be a mother!
The same attraction to meaning, to visual words and things, was reflected in the magnificent nonsense that one four-year-old Muscovite recently created.
Hearing poems from adults:
Dashing horse, you are the master
He took me out of the battle like an arrow,
But the evil Ossetian bullet
I caught up with you in the darkness...
he immediately learned them by heart, and the last couplet was formatted like this:
But the evil fish is sturgeon
I caught up with you in the darkness.
Four-year-old Galochka, having heard the famous song “My beloved city is melting in a blue haze,” reproduced these words in this way: “My favorite city, the blue smoke of China.”
And she called Don Quixote “Thin Cat”.
When my older sister I memorized Pushkin’s poem out loud:
How the prophetic Oleg is getting ready now,
I, a five-year-old boy, understood this line in my own way:
How Oleg collects his things now.
Batyushkov has this line:
Make noise, make noise with waves, Rona!
The famous linguist D.N. Ushakov said at a lecture to students that in childhood he perceived this line as follows:
No matter how wrong a child may be in the interpretation of certain words and concepts, this cannot discredit the most expedient method by which he comes to a final understanding of our speech.
Exactly the same verbal creativity can be observed in the speech of the people.
In linguistics, this false interpretation of words is called “folk (or semi-folk) etymology.”
Nikolaev soldiers adapted the foreign word “gospital” to their understanding, giving it the malicious nickname “voshpital” (that is, a lice nursery).
The popular name for the plaster is klastyr, the boulevard is gulvar. A polyclinic is popularly called a semi-clinic, in contrast to a clinic, that is, a hospital.
The German word Profoss (this was once the name of a military police officer who performed the duties of a warden and executioner) has changed colloquially into scoundrel.
Let's remember Nekrasov's:
How can you not understand! With bears
Quite a few of them are staggering
Scoundrels even now.
Those ancient Egyptian sphinxes that stand over the Neva in Leningrad in front of the Academy of Arts were colloquially called sphinxes (that is, simply pigs), as noted in one of Nekrasov’s early poems:
And in one of Dahl's stories:
The inhabitants have always treated this folk art with contempt and disdain.
Chukovsky Korney
From two to five
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky
Chapter one. Children's language
I. I listen
II. Imitation and creativity
III. "Folk etymology"
IV. Effectiveness
V. The Conquest of Grammar
VI. Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults
VII. Exposing cliches
VIII. Masking Ignorance
IX. Misinterpretation of words
X. Children's speech and people
XI. Speech education
Chapter two. Tireless explorer
I. Search for patterns
II. Half-belief
III. "One Hundred Thousand Why"
IV. Children about birth
V. Hatred of the beginning
VI. Children about death
VII. New era and children
VIII. Tears and tricks
IX. I keep listening
Chapter three. Fight for a fairy tale
I. Conversation about Munchausen. 1929
II. "There are no sharks!"
III. It's time to wise up! 1934
IV. And again about Munchausen. 1936
V. Philistine methods of criticism. 1956
VI. "It is unnatural that..." 1960
Chapter Four. Stupid absurdities
II. Timoshka on a cat
III. Child's attraction to changelings
IV. Pedagogical value of shifters
V. The Ancestors of Their Enemies and Persecutors
Chapter five. How children compose poems
I. Attraction to rhyme
II. Verse pick-ups
III. Pa and Ma
IV. First poems
V. About poetry education
VI. Ekikiki and non-ekikiki
VII. More about poetry education
VIII. Before and now
Chapter six. Commandments for children's poets
I. Learn from the people. - Learn from children
II. Imagery and effectiveness
III. Music
IV. Rhymes. - Structure of verses
V. Refusal of epithets. - Rhythmics
VI. Game verses
VII. The Last Commandments
Notes
Great-granddaughter Mashenka
It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. Throughout this long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name all my friends by name. books sharing with me their observations, thoughts, information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
Chapter one
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges used a spatula to cut the earthworm in half.
Why did you do this?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “begging the fish for a new house, then a new trough. I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
How dare you fight?
Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
Nanny, what kind of heaven is this?
And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries are...
I understand: heaven is compote.
Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
The woman washes her face with soap!
A woman doesn't have a muzzle, a woman has a face.
I went and looked again.
No, still a little snout.
Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
I’m not crying to you, but to Aunt Sima.
Will you water the cone too?
To make the little ones grow?
We, adults, assign the ending “yata” only to living creatures: lambs, piglets, etc. But since for children even nonliving things are alive, they use this ending more often than we do, and you can always hear from them:
Dad, look how cute these cars are!
Seryozha, two and a half years old, first saw a fire spitting with bright sparks, clapped his hands and shouted:
Fire and Ogonyata! Fire and Ogonyata!
I saw a painting of the Madonna:
Madonna and Child.
Oh, grandpa, the pussy sneezed!
Why didn’t you, Lenochka, tell the cat: good luck?
And who will thank me?
Philosophy of art:
I sing so much that the room becomes big and beautiful...
It's hot in Anapa, like sitting on a primus stove.
You see: I’m all barefoot!
I'll get up so early that it will be too late.
Don't put out the fire, otherwise you won't be able to sleep!
Listen, dad, a fantasy story: once upon a time there was a horse, its name was Kicking... But then it was renamed because it didn’t kick anyone...
He draws flowers, and there are three dozen dots around.
What is this? Flies?
No, the smell is from flowers.
What did you scratch yourself on?
About the cat.
At night he wakes up a tired mother:
Mom, mom, if a kind lion meets a giraffe he knows, will he eat her or not?
What a terrible sponge you are! So that it gets up now!
Lyalechka was sprayed with perfume:
I'm so smelly
"Lena. From two to four years." The father says to little Kirill, who climbed onto the windowsill:
- Get off the window, otherwise you will fall and be hunchbacked.
- Interesting... And the camel fell twice.
The older sister watches the concert of her favorite singer and says:
- I’ll have to look at her Instagram.
The younger sister heard and asks:
- What is a boastogram?
Little Julia:
- Grandma, let's play. It’s like I’m a squirrel jumping on the sofa, and you’re going to scold me.
- Why scold?
- And to make it fun.
A little girl retells the fairy tale about the Firebird:
- He touched the golden cage, and there was an alarm there...
A little girl can't find wings to perform in a butterfly costume at a matinee.
“Well, now you have to be a caterpillar,” Nastya sighs.
Little brother refuses to take the medicine, saying that it smells bad. And his sister answers him:
- Close your nose and drink.
Little Larisa saw leopards on TV and shouted:
- I know who it is! These are leopards!
Little Sveta:
- Eyes to look. Mouth to eat. A nose to breathe, and eyebrows... (thought) so that the face does not look stupid.
Little Igor:
- Mom, why do the fish prick? Don't give me fish with needles (bones).
Igor, why are you tossing and turning in bed - can’t sleep?
- Mom, I can’t park.
Mom, was Grandma Tamara a monkey before?
- Of course not.
- But people used to be monkeys!
I really like the sea, it’s very beautiful! I just don't like the taste.
Igor, did you like riding the pony?
- Mom, I didn’t ride a pony, it has legs, not wheels.
Grandma made jam.
Little Lena:
- What is this?
- Jam.
- Oh, the jam is swimming in the basin.
The clock is ticking.
A pear fell from a tree in the garden.
Lena:
- The pear fell! The pear needs to be repaired.
Lena is bathing. There was a sound of water in the upstairs bathroom somewhere near the neighbors. She listened and said:
- The toilet is breathing.
Dad calls Lena:
- Help me...
- I can’t, my hands are full on the bed.
Mom asks Lenochka:
- Don't wet yourself.
- I won’t vomit.
Finally, a large amount of snow fell in November. Lena looks out the window:
- Oh-oh-oh! How much winter there is!
The snow has melted. Black earth appeared in different places. Lena comments:
- The holes fell out in the snow.
Lena:
- Henna...
- Why are you crying?
- I broke my tongue.
Lena lies in her crib and talks to herself:
-Are you not sleeping? - asks mom.
“I’m talking to Lena,” Lena answers.
On New Year's tree the lights were lit. They sparkled brightly. Lena comments:
- The Christmas tree is playing around.
Lena turns to her mother:
- I want bread with a white sandwich.
In winter, Helen looks out the window:
- Everything is covered in snow.
Lena approaches her mother:
- I want to be sorry. Have pity on me.
A child looks at a toy hare:
- What a nice bunny!
Slavik and Lena are walking on the street. Slavik tells Lena:
- Lena, you are full of holes!
Lena:
- I'm not full of holes!
- You're full of holes!
- No, I'm not full of holes!
Slavik explains:
-You have holes in your nose. You're full of holes!
The whole family went by car out of town. Dad says that we're about to get stuck in a traffic jam. To which Lena replies:
- We will drive fast and traffic jams will not catch up with us.
Lenochka looks at Stasik the cat and says:
- Look at Stasik’s furry face.
Lena got sick and said:
- I don’t have the strength to stand, but I have the strength to lie down.
- How do you feel? - asks mom.
- A little bit good.
She's thirty years old...
Lena asks:
- Feed the cats, otherwise Peach (the cat) was meowing in all directions.
Olya. From three to five years.
Newspaper: "Star Boulevard".
Five-year-old Olya says to her little brother, who just turned three:- Vanechka, how I envy you: you still have your whole life ahead of you!
Mommy, of course, I’m already an adult, but you can call me sweetie.
He watches a ballet on TV and asks:
- Are the men who dance called bareluns?
Put it on kindergarten new dress and says:
- Seryozha will see me and say: “How beautiful Olya is today!” If he doesn’t say it, I’ll spank him.
Dad explained to Olya the rules of chess. Olina's reaction:
- What a bloodthirsty game. Everyone eats someone. We need to come up with new rules. The figures on the squares met, kissed and moved on.
I'm already an adult. I can watch nonsense on TV.
Stepan. From three to five years.
Newspaper: "Star Boulevard".
- Step, what do you want to become when you grow up?- Driver. Who will dad be when he grows up?
- Dad has already grown up.
- Yes... Why do we feed him?
I played at the computer for a long time, after which I said:
- My eyes are losing consciousness.
When will the sequel to the movie about the Count of Monte Rat (Monte Cristo) be shown?
Dad said that he was in a time when there was no Internet yet.
Styopa exclaims:
- Well, dad, you're a caveman!
Step, who are you afraid of?
- Robot-transformer-policeman-invisible.
Glory. From three to five years.
Newspaper: "Star Boulevard".
- Sleeping is even cooler than going to the cinema, because you don’t need tickets.Slava, what types of troops do you know?
Slavik thought for a moment and said uncertainly:
- Pechenegs?..
Mom, can you imagine the smell?
- How is that?
- Well, smell it with your mind.
First time flying on an airplane. He sees clouds slowly flying past and asks:
- Are we stuck in a traffic jam again?
Swings on a swing and asks:
- Mom, rock me louder!
Elina. From four to five years.
Newspaper: "Star Boulevard".
- My sunshine, I love you.- That's right, this is what I was born for.
She saw beef tongue in the store and asked:
- What, did the cow talk a lot?
Is cataclysm an enema for a cat?
Talks about dancing classes in kindergarten:
- Well, some people dance badly, they only waste their music.
I listened to the bedtime story “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats” and asked:
-Where was daddy the goat all this time?
Elya. From three to five years.
Newspaper: "Star Boulevard".
- Dad, when will you come to me now?Grandma, what should I give you for your birthday?
- I don’t need anything except health.
- So, pills.
He brings a cookbook and asks:
- Mom, read a fairy tale about meat...
We read a fairy tale where a prince on a white horse rushed to a girl. Elya thought about it and said:
- I don’t need a prince. I just need a horse. White...
I woke up earlier than everyone else in the morning and let’s run around the apartment screaming:
- Why are parents such decrepit people?!
After watching the opening of the Olympics I issued:
- Mom, happy St. Olympian’s Day!
"From two to five."
Korney Chukovsky.
This is what Lyalya said when some girl in the bathhouse stole her mother’s shoes:She tried them on and squatted.
Lidochka, four and a half years old, tells herself a fairy tale:
- The nanny nursed him, his mother mothered him.
Is roach a kind of fish?
You will be the buyer, and I will be the seller.
- Not a seller, but a seller.
- Well, okay: I will be the seller, and you will be the buyer.
Little Red Riding Hood came out of the wolf's mouth chewed?
Doesn't the needle hurt your stocking?
On the bus, a four-year-old boy sits in his father’s arms. A woman enters. The boy, wanting to be polite, jumps up from his father’s lap:
- Gardener, please!
Lev was five years old, and he was terribly afraid of returning to four (which he was once threatened with)
How old are you?
- It’s almost eight, but for now it’s three.
Leonid Andreev’s mother told me that when he was three years old, he once, tossing and turning in bed, complained:
- I’m on one side, I’m on the other side, I’m on the third side, I’m on the fourth side, I’m on the fifth side - I still can’t fall asleep.
Looking at us bald:
- Why do you have so much face?
The teacher's son, five-year-old Valery:
- Is Pushkin alive now?
- No.
- And Tolstoy?
- No.
- Are there living writers?
- There are.
- Has anyone seen them?
There is a picture in the book: an evil snake is approaching a bird’s nest.
Seeing the picture, Natasha’s friend, five-year-old Valerka, attacked the snake with his fists.
- Don't hit me! - Natasha screamed. - I already beat her at home.
Seryozha Sosinsky with a philosophical bent of mind:
- When I sleep, it seems to me that I am nowhere: not in any bed, not even in the room. Where am I then mom?
Same:
- Mom, can I go back to sleep?
- How - back?
- Fall asleep in the morning and wake up last night?
A tooth was pulled out.
- Let him now be in pain at the doctor’s bank.
Dad, what funny policemen! He said “you” to me, as if there were several of me.
Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen, and they had a little prince.
Get me the moon, even if it’s bitten.
Auntie, you are very beautiful.
- What is beautiful about me?
- Glasses and skullcap.
The stars are very far away. So how do people know their names?
Neighbor Sasha was so proud of the bedbugs living in his bed that five-year-old Antosha Ivanov began to cry with envy:
- I wish I had bedbugs!
So you say - there are no miracles. Isn’t it a miracle that the cherry trees bloomed overnight?
Our grandmother cut all the cockerels in our village. Now let her lay the eggs herself.
An ineradicable passion for boasting.
- And my dad can snore!
- And there is so much dust in our dacha!
She served her leg.
- I have Borzhom in my leg!
How did you fall out of bed?
“I slept and slept at night and didn’t look at myself, and then I looked at the bed and saw: I wasn’t there.”
Volodya, you know: a rooster’s nose is its mouth!
When you hold the candy in your mouth, it tastes good. And when in the hand it tastes bad.
But how do worms live in the stomach without lighting? It's completely dark for them there.
I was sleeping, and the woman left, and there was such a cry...
-Who shouted?
- Yes, I am.
A skirt is when you have two legs in one pant leg.
Grandma, where are you going?
- To the doctor.
The girl is in tears. And he asks, without ceasing to sob:
- When you're gone?
- Yes, right this minute.
- Why didn’t you tell me earlier - I would have started crying earlier.
I fell today and hurt myself badly.
- Did you cry?
- No.
- Why?
- But no one saw it.
“I’ll marry Vova,” says four-year-old Tanya, “he has a beautiful suit, and Petya too, he gave me a pretty penny.”
- What about Lyosha? After all, he has so many toys!
- Well! I'll have to marry him too.
Is it true that all chairs in America are electric?
When it's day here, it's night in America.
- Serves them right, the bourgeoisie.
On the trolleybus:
- Aunt, move over!
Silence.
- Aunt, please move.
Silence.
- Mom, is this aunt unvoiced?
The girl was traveling on the train with her talkative mother, whom she was jealous of for a long time; Finally covered her mouth:
- Mom, close your radio!
Is it true, mom, that a trolleybus is a cross between a tram and a bus?
Kika was given an enema. He commanded:
- Well, turn it on!
A poem by Nekrasov is read to five-year-old Yura.
- "The Death of a Peasant. Part One..."
Yura:
- Did he die in parts?
An old woman died in the neighboring yard.
- No, old man! I saw for myself that the old man! They carry the coffin ahead, and they lead the old man by the arms, but he cries and does not want to be buried.
My grandmother will never die. Grandfather died - that's enough!
Natasha, who are they burying?
“You won’t understand: there are a lot of them, and they are all moving.”
A five-year-old girl came with her mother to the cemetery and suddenly saw a drunk man walking staggering behind the bushes.
- Has this uncle already dug himself out of the grave?
Don't you know that all people are descended from monkeys: both me and your mother.
- You do as you wish. But my mother is not.
I know how stars do! They are made from excess moon.
The palm of my right leg itches.
It’s a miracle - I drink water, coffee, tea, and cocoa, but only tea comes out of me.
Alyonka has only little fingers on her hands.
Oh. Mom, I feel sick under my knee!
Eyes to look... Ears to hear... Mouth to speak... But why a navel? It must be for beauty...
Child (9 years old):
- Why is Aibolit painted in children's hospitals? He's a veterinarian!
Children talk about birth.
Anyuta asks a lot of questions about the origins of people. Grandmother explains to Anyuta that she was once in her mother’s tummy.After some time:
- I was in my mother’s tummy. And mom was in Baba Anyuta’s tummy. And Grandma Anyuta was with her mother. And her mother is also with her mother... Like nesting dolls!
Listen, mom: when I was born, how did you know that I was Yurochka?
What time was I born?
- At half past six.
- Oh, you didn’t even have time to drink tea!
The mother of a five-year-old boy, returning from the maternity hospital, loudly lamented that she had a boy instead of the expected girl.
Listening to her complaints, her son advised:
- And if you still have a copy of the receipt, you can exchange it!
Mom, who gave birth to me? You? That's what I knew. If it were dad, I would have a mustache.
Can a rooster completely, completely, completely forget that he is a rooster and lay an egg?
How is it - where did I come from? You yourself gave birth to me with your own hands.
Uncle, uncle, these little ones spilled out of the big rabbit. Go quickly, otherwise they will crawl back in and you will never see them!
Eh, mom, mom, why did you give birth to this nasty Gugu! It would be better if he sat in your stomach and would be bored there all his life.
Will mothers give birth to boys? What then are dads for?
"One hundred thousand why." Children say.
- Mom, how is the tram going?- Current flows through the wires. The motor starts to work, turns the wheels, and the tram moves.
- No, not like that.
- What about it?
- Here’s how: ding-ding-ding, w-w-w-w!
Why did the gooseberries get stuck with pins?
Mom, why do they put a seed in every cherry? After all, the bones still need to be thrown away.
Well, okay: the zoo needs animals. Why are there animals in the forest? Just a waste of people and unnecessary fear.
Why is there snow on the roof? After all, people don’t ski or sled on the roof.
Who made the holes in the nose?
Is it possible to get a newspaper large enough to wrap a live camel?
Why is the moon so bright?
Who makes bedbugs?
Are canned foods made at the conservatory?
Do I have these eyes forever or will they fall out like teeth?
I am why, and you are why.
