Congratulations John and Liz!

You hear it first

Looks like the mainstream linguistic blogs have finally gotten around to talking about this Priscilla Dunstan baby language bullshit.

See posts at Language Hat and Langauge Log. Hmm. Only a few weeks late.

Linguistic snake oil

My mother in law called up the other day to tell us about a woman on Oprah who speaks the secret language of babies! It turns out that Priscilla Dunstan has used her incredible photographic memory to decode the secret, universal language of newborns.

years of research has found that this is a language shared by all babies throughout the world. A simple language you will soon be able to hear and understand. Welcome to The Dunstan Baby Language.

After nearly a decade of research, Dunstan Baby has found that newborns use specific ‘words’ to express basic needs, such as hunger, gas or tiredness. The Dunstan Baby Language teaches parents how to identify these words within their baby’s cries, therefore allowing them to respond appropriately to their baby’s physical need and eliminating any trial and error by the parents that often leads to frustration and a decrease in self-confidence.

Here are some of the words you can learn to comunicate with your child (before the age of 3 months):
1. "neh" = hungry
2. "owh" = sleepy
3. "heh" = discomfort
4. "eair" = lower gas
5. "eh" = burp
And it's only $60 for 2 (count 'em, two!) full-length DVD's to learn the entire system. This is better than sign-language!