Baby talk

Being new parents, my wife and I get to face new issues. One of the big ones is about language. When folks ask what language my wife and I speak at home, my typical response is to say that we speak Thai because it's the language of least resistance. Obviously, we'd like our daughter to speak both English and Thai natively. But I find myself so used to speaking Thai nearly all the time that I speak Thai with the baby, without thinking about it. It's a challenge.

My bilingual woes aside, the real point of this post is "baby" talk. There are quite a few words that I'm getting way more mileage out of than I ever did in my previous incarnation as a non-parent. To look at a few:

• จ๊ะเอ๋ = 'peekaboo' A good all purpose expression for playing with infants, whether you're actually peeking and booing or not.

• อึ = 'poop' This works as both a noun and a verb. A cutesy word for the least fun part of parenthood (so far, anyhow). [Update: My wife reminds me that this is also often pronounced อึ๊, with a high tone. I guess it makes it all the cuter.]
  

• ผ้าอ้อม = 'diaper' There's nothing ผ้า about disposable diapers these days, but that's what they're called. The more accurate name for this disposable variety is ผ้าอ้อมสำเร็จรูป. And with the help of stores like Tesco Lotus, Mamy Poko is quickly supplanting mommy dunk-o and scrub-o. There's also a generic colloquial term for disposable diapers, แพมเพอร์ส [แพ็มเพิด], from the brand name Pampers. My wife and I also use ไดเปอร์ [ไดเป้อ], but I haven't heard that elsewhere, although it gets a few hundred Google hits.
  

And this is only the beginning.