Aussie word of the day: toddler edition

People ask me all the time what kind of accent Zeke has, as in, is he picking up any of Jason's Australian accent. And most of the time it's hard to discern any real accent because he's still learning pronunciation. I don't doubt that eventually he'll sound American, but be able to put the Aussie accent later in life when he's trying to pick up chicks.*

So far, I haven't noticed much of an accent, except for early on in his pronunciation of "water" (he used to say "woh-tah," like Jason does, but now has flattened out the "a" and sounds American). I have noticed that when we read Go, Dog. Go! -- sometimes I'll have him "read" the first couple of pages ("Dog." "Big dog. Little dog." "Big dogs and little dogs. Black and white dogs.") -- he says "dog" almost like there's a second "o" in there ("doog"), which is kind of how Jason pronounces it.

Then last night, we were reading Leonardo the Terrible Monster for the 70 millionth time. And we got to the part about how Leonardo doesn't have the benefit, scariness-wise, of being just plain weird, like Hector.

Zeke was doing his "what's this?" "what's that?" thing where he points to different pictures or images in the book and asks rapid-fire questions about them (even though he knows the answers). He pointed to Hector, a very silly-looking monster with 3 eyes and a huge goofy top hat and a tail-thingy that also kind of looks like an arm, and said, "what's that?"

"That's Hector," I said.

"He's weeeeeeeeed," Zeke exclaimed.

I had a minute of panic.

Did he just say Hector has weed? I mean, I don't doubt it, but how the fuck does he know what weed is? WHO'S TEACHING MY KID ABOUT DRUGS??

Then I thought about it and realized that he was using Jason's hyper-Aussie-fied pronunciation of the word "weird."

Big exhale.

__________

*American girls dig the Aussie accent, for reasons I will never understand. I think it sounds all nasal-y and kind of grating, but I can't even tell you how often women have practically flung their panties at Jason when he started to talk, that's how much it happens. Now, give me a good Scots accent, and my toes definitely start to curl. But I digress.