My Daughter Might Speak Somoan

I am not one to brag – being nothing if not unpretentious – but I recently had occasion to suspect that my nine-year-old daughter is a little bit of a linguist. How else could I explain the fact that just a few weeks ago, I heard young JJ speak a smattering of Samoan? 

I had casually asked her a question in perfectly proper English (“What would you like for dinner tonight?”). To my surprise, she replied in a language that was not immediately familiar to me. After a beat, I started to recognise the inflections in her reply as typical of native Polynesian languages (I, myself, am also a bit of a linguist – thanks to multiple viewings of the Disney cartoon Moana, where the eponymous heroine is of Polynesian descent). So it soon became clear to me that JJ’s reply was indeed distinctly Samoan.

And because I know that JJ is currently stuck in her chicken-rice phase, having recently graduated from a year-long carbonara residency, I could also safely assume that she had said, “chicken rice” – but in Samoan. 

After the initial burst of fatherly pride, I quizzed her further, if only to confirm my hypothesis.

“JJ, this is very important so listen carefully: How do you say ‘chicken rice’ in Samoan?” I pressed.

True enough, my near-tween daughter repeated her answer in perfectly fluent Samoan…

“Aut’noh.”

But this is where it starts to get confusing. Almost as if “aut’noh” was the latest Gen Alpha vernacular to mean absolutely nothing but invoked at every context-free opportunity (think skibidi toilets and six-seven chants) , JJ has started to respond to all manner of questions with, what is essentially, Samoan chicken rice.

Q: Do you have homework today?

A: Aut’noh.

Q: Is your sore throat a bit better?

A: Aut’noh.

Q: Do you think we should eat out or at home tonight?

A: Out… no?

That’s What She Said

By now, most of you clever parent-readers would have realised that JJ is not much of a linguist and was not speaking Samoan at all. You might also recognise that lazy-drawl version of “I don’t know” as typical of a child who is just starting to develop a juvenile ennui. (Yes, I am also conversant in at least five French words, together with “je ne sais” and “pas”.)

Child psychiatrists have suggested that kids who choose to disengage repeatedly with a response like “I don’t know” do so for a host of reasons. Sometimes it’s out of the fear that their answer will be “incorrect” or poorly received, leading them to choose nonchalance (another French word I know) over engagement. Other times, it could be a child’s way of buying more time to process the question, as they grapple with their feelings on the subject. 

More often than not, it’s really just a rite of passage. These children who have relied on us so utterly during those early years are now starting to assert their independence. They are establishing their unique identities as individuals, finding their own way to cut the proverbial cord and do away with the familiar crutch of parental control.

And what better way to assert themselves than by acting like they’re ashamed of us, baulking at the very existence of their terminally un-hip parents. (Ironic, considering the fact that their very existence is the product of these same uncool fathers and naggy mothers, and the result of their “eww-gross” fornication.)

Premature donna

As parents, we were young once too and remember too well that at some early point in our lives, we treated our own parents with that same callous disdain. While we will all eventually grow out of it, one thing feels different with this generation of kids. They seem to have arrived at this life-stage so much earlier than we did. Whereas we typically started to act up only during our teenage years, today’s children turn churlish a few years before we can even use puberty as an excuse. 

Hormonal changes during those transformative teen years used to be the catalyst for this behavioural change. As we stumbled towards young adulthood, a hormonal rush rendered us awkward and disconnected. We started to notice the glaring generational gaps, everything from fashion sense to music preferences. We also started to notice the opposite sex; this burgeoning sexual attraction was enough reason to make us want to disown our parents, lest they embarrass us in front of our crushes.

Today’s pre-tween kids, even without this pubescent push, are already primed to unleash their torpid insouciance onto their embarrassing parents. For some reason, they have effectively “short-cut” the innocence of childhood, arriving at the gates of adolescent indifference before they’ve even lost all their baby teeth. 

At this rate, I’m not sure what kind of apathetic monster JJ will morph into when puberty actually arrives. Parenting, like Gen Alpha lingo, is complex and unpredictable. Meaning, aut’noh what aut‘noh.

For now, I will at least be grateful that JJ’s premature rebellion is currently limited to a faux Polynesian dialect. And if all else fails, I can still coax her to spend some quality time with me with a chicken-rice bribe – even if she insists on ordering it in “Samoan”.