Arguing with Rubén

One of Nora's favorite pastimes lately is having imaginary arguments over the phone, usually with her friends from daycare or her daycare provider, but sometimes with her grandparents. Somehow, she latched on to one poor lad named Rubén and has ceaseless fights with him "over the phone", perhaps giving a glimpse into boy troubles that await us in adolescence. Just like when she used to pretend to yell at another daycare classmate, I suspect that this poor Rubén fellow is completely innocent of all the charges he's being accused of on a daily, hourly, and minutely basis, but it's seems to be all real in Nora's mind. Unfortunately, Rubén is one of the few kids at daycare that doesn't have a mugshot next to his cubbyhole, so I don't even know what he looks like. He certainly has Nora's attention, though. This is a pretty good example of the state of Nora's spoken Spanish. The verb conjugation is all pretty flawless, but sometimes it takes her a couple seconds to figure out what to say next. And sometimes she confuses words, to humorous effect.

For instance, in this video, she confuses dar una torta, to slap [someone], with dar una tortuga, to give [someone] a turtle. She also tends to mispronounce poquito as popito, and she says sarta instead of harta (sounds like ar-tah).

It was a pretty laborious task to subtitle all this rambling. You can switch to the original Spanish under the CC menu if you'd like to follow along.

She can do this for hours, passing the phone back and forth with one of her parents. When she does it with me, she tends to yell at Rubén in English, and with her mother, it's all Spanish.