[Book Review] Learning Language from Children's "Misstatements" [Today, I Planted a Gorilla]

"Today, I planted a gorilla."

I couldn't help but laugh at this title.

"Today, I Planted a Gorilla" is a book published by Taiki Mizuno, a personality from the YouTube channel "Yuru Gengogaku Radio" (Casual Linguistics Radio), which I watch often.

"Yuru Gengogaku Radio" is a channel that explains the origins and rules of language in a literally "casual" way.

Linguistics might sound difficult, but by using familiar words as topics, they make you think, "Oh, so that's what it meant!"

It is one of the YouTube channels I would most recommend right now.

On that "Yuru Gengogaku Radio," they collected "misstatements" from children sent in by listeners.

In this book, they don't just end those misstatements as funny anecdotes; they dig down to the point of,

"Why did the child create such a word?"

The title, "Today, I planted a gorilla," of course doesn't mean the child actually planted a gorilla in the ground.

Within it lies the child's own understanding of language and the child's own logic.

I won't touch on the specific content because it would be a spoiler for the book.

However, if you have children in your home, I definitely want you to pick it up at least once.

While it will make you chuckle, it also makes you interested in the mechanisms of development, thinking, "So this is how children learn words."

It was a book packed with such episodes.

Perhaps they are not "mistakes" but "hypotheses"

While reading this book, what I found particularly interesting was the idea that the process of children's language acquisition is abduction (hypothetical reasoning).

When I hear a child's misstatement, I tend to correct them by saying,
"That's wrong."

But when you think about it, it's mysterious.

Why did that mistake happen?

Children are not just uttering words at random.

While listening to the words adults use, they make their own hypotheses, such as,

"Maybe this is what it means,"

"Maybe this is the rule."

And then, they use those hypotheses to create new words.

As a result, words that look like "mistakes" from an adult's perspective are born.

In other words, a misstatement might be



a trace of the child thinking about language.

The "abduction" that appears here

To put it simply, abduction is

"thinking of the hypothesis that best explains what is happening in front of you."

For example, suppose you wake up in the morning and the road is wet.

The fact that "the road is wet" alone does not prove that it rained.

Maybe someone sprinkled water.

Maybe water leaked due to some accident.

Even so,

"Could it have rained?"

I think.

This is abduction.

In other words,

observe the result → infer the cause → create the most plausible hypothesis

is the thought process.

And this way of thinking can also be used when looking at children's language.

For example, suppose a child suddenly uses a word that adults rarely use.

Normally, it would end with
"they misspoke."

But if you take a step further and ask,
"Why did they use this word?"

Then,

"Did they connect words with similar sounds?"

"Did they apply a rule from another word?"

"Did they interpret the adult's word in their own way?"

Various hypotheses will emerge.

Then, the child's "mistake" suddenly starts to look interesting.

My daughter who says "Anpan-kick"

Here, I would like to talk about my 3-year-old daughter.

My daughter is a huge fan of Anpanman and always watches it intently.

However, the special move of Anpanman, which she must have seen many times,

"An-pan-ch!"

for some reason, she always says,

"An-pan-kick!"

instead.

And yet, her action is clearly a punch.

The way she says it is cute, and I actually quite like this "An-pan-kick,"
but after reading the book,

"What if there is a hypothesis of her own behind this?"

I started to wonder.

At first, I simply thought,

that words like "An-pan-ch" and "An-kick" just got mixed up in her head.

I thought that might be it.

But perhaps,

"Her own name" + "Name of the move"

she might have discovered some kind of rule like that on her own.

Does she perceive "An-pan-ch" not as a single word,

"An-pan" + "ch"

but as a different grouping?

Or is she combining words that sound similar in her own way?

Once I started thinking that way,

"An-pan-kick"

That one phrase doesn't just look like a simple misstatement, but rather
the result of a small hypothesis formed inside my daughter's head
.

(...By the way, looking into it further, it seems the move "Anpan-kick" itself was actually used by Anpanman once. If that's the case, this story ends here.)

I might be overthinking it.

But thinking like this—"Why did she say that?"—was the biggest change I gained from reading this book.

"Mistakes" are windows into the content of our thoughts

I think this is the most interesting part of this book.

When you only look at correct language, it's hard to see how children are understanding words.

But when you look at incorrect language, the question
"Why did they come up with that answer?"
arises.

From there, you form a hypothesis.

In other words,

Misstatement → Question → Hypothesis → Understanding the child's thinking

a flow like this is created.

Misstatements might be small windows for peeking into a child's mind.

And this isn't just about children

Actually, adults do the same thing.

When we encounter a word we don't know,

"It probably means something like this"

we guess.

When we see the actions of someone we don't know,

"There must be a reason for this"

we think.

Watching the news,

"Why did this happen?"

we speculate on the cause.

In our daily lives, we create "plausible explanations" from the facts before us.

Therefore, abduction is not so much a difficult topic of philosophy or logic, but rather,

a way of thinking that humans use all the time to understand the world

it could be said.

Reading this book will change how you view "mistakes"

"Today, I Planted a Gorilla" is, on the surface, a book to enjoy children's funny misstatements.

But deep down, there is,

"How do humans understand language?"

a major theme.

Instead of dismissing a child's words as "mistakes,"

"Why did they think that way?"

try thinking about it.

Then, you will see the child's own hypotheses and rules.

When you think about it that way,

"Today, I planted a gorilla"

is not just a funny misstatement.

It might be a small thought experiment that teaches us how children understand the world
.

When a child makes a mistake,

"That's wrong,"

instead of correcting them immediately,

"Why did you think that?"

try asking them.

From that one question, the "rules of the world" inside a child's mind might become a little clearer.

And perhaps,by becoming a parent who can enjoy a child's misstatements, you might be able to get a more interesting glimpse into their world.