"It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

Daniel's Spanish teacher must be spectacular. And I also suspect he got Daddy's language genes, perhaps more than Mommy's left-brained numeracy genes. He can count to twelve - in English - but he can count to 20 - or veinte - in Spanish.

Ian was, somewhat out of character, gloating about Daniel's relative limitation with English integers, and he challenged him to count to 20 in English in the car tonight. Daniel wisely, and impressively, exercised the multicultural alternative, with aplomb.

Then it was Daniel's turn to gloat. Madeleine started "counting" in Spanish - something like ocho and diez back and fourth - and Daniel started asking her "Madeleine, do you know what 'ocho' means?"

At that point, Ian put things into perspective:

"She doesn't know what 'means' means."

(November 30, 2010)