Jah mani

It's N's favourite phrase. When things fall to the ground, such as dropping clothes from upstairs, she cries jah-mani. It's a conjoining of jah - closely translated to gosh and mani - being a sound from "jameen" meaning ground.

N understands most things we say, in English and in Hindi. When instructed to come and brush her teeth, in hindi or in english, she immediately understands the routine of finding the stool, climbing up, grabbing her toothbrush and waiting for one of us to apply a dab of baby McLeans. A separate example is "Dada se baat karna" meaning lets go talk to grandfather on the computer (via Skype). She drops everything, runs to the computer room, climbs up on to the chair (or further on to the desk) and waits patiently for us to dial in.

But at the same time, we're noticing her falling a bit behind in expressing herself in more ways than just nods of the head or saying no or nah. On the phone, she can say bye, take care and change her loudness to mimic me and say it very softly. What we don't hear is phrases like "I want cake" or "Mummy's got a camera" or "I love it" or the hindi equivalents. We get jumbles. N knows what she's saying is nonsensical because she doesn't get frustrated when we don't understand her, just smiles and tries again.

So it feels a bit disorientating; trying to talk to her is a one way conversation, with her understanding but not responding. And then it comes back the other way, with jumbles of total non-words and phrases. We're at a bit of a loss to explain why its taking her so long to progress from one word to two to three.