Small American children and foreign visitors have something in common: bizarre and comical manglings of the English language. In college, there was an extremely diverse student body; the phrase "How to say in English..." was pretty common in my dorm. (I'm sure my Swiss friends were equally entertained by my strange grammatical constructions in French Literature class.) Nowadays, I enjoy the mispronunciations and inappropriate usage of various words and phrases by my own offspring (4 and 6 years old).
"Observe and learn," as my son advised me:
1. CANDACE = the large white boards used by artists
2. BAKING = long strips of breakfast meat, procured from a pig
3. HEE-HILES = stilletto shoes worn by ladies and Barbies
4. KINGBURGERS = what you order at the fast-food joint with the "flamebroiled" slogan
5. DEEYOND = far far away, as in "way deeond the fence"
6. OBSTACLE = a delicious frozen treat on a stick
7. ATTEND = not real, as in "Let's attend to be pirates."
8. BY PURPOSE = by specific design, not accidental: "He broke my toy by purpose."
9. AHMAY = the word you say at the end of a prayer
10. HEART SALAMI = not the soft salami from Genoa, the other kind
11. ANDBANNA = a square, usually paisley-print, cloth you can wear on your head (or your neck if you're a cowboy)
I guess at some point I should actually correct these gentle mistakes, but WHY NOW when there's still so much entertainment in it for the overstressed grownups?