English, as a language, can be bewildering to a 4 year old, I guess. But kids seem to find a way to master this language easily, - in their own, uncomplicated way!
The case in point is my younger daughter who will turn 5 next month. As a 2-year old, she did not know a word of English. When we visited her cousins in the US who spoke mostly accented English, she was left speechless (literally!). But not for long...within a couple of weeks, she picked up the language and much to our amazement, she was able to have a conversation with her cousins!
Now, over the last couple of years, her vocabulary has improved considerably. (when I was her age, I didn't know even a quarter of what she knows now!) She has coined new words to address the past tense of certain verbs - actually, the way she puts it makes more sense.
Put becomes "putten", (I have putten all the toys inside), cut turns into "cutted" (She cutted the cake), bite turns into "bited" (Oh, I bited my tongue), buy becomes 'buyed' (She tells her sister sternly - don't touch this box, Appa buyed it for me!). By the same logic, see does not become "seed " but becomes "sawed". ("Did you see the book?", I ask her. She replies, "Yes, I sawed it".)
One of her hilarious constructs was when she hit a mosquito, and then she told her sister proudly "Akka, I died off the mosquito!"
Hopefully, when she reads this at some point, she will take it in the right spirit - I don't want to be "hitted" by her!
