Raising Gaybies:
Dochee
Last month, our family traveled to Europe and Asia for my husband’s 50th birthday. We traveled to 6 different countries, with each country speaking a different language. Most people spoke English – except on the rare occasion someone spoke Dochee. What, you never heard of Dochee? Most people haven’t. In fact, I only know 2 people who know its true origin – and the meaning of every word – our kids! Yes, the 5 year old twins have come up with their own language to thwart the “parental mechanism” of being omnipresent. “Finally” as our little boy might say, “there is something you don’t know Papa.” To my amazement, he is correct. Even more amazing, Dochee is very real. It’s called “cryptophasia” and to my surprise, the New York Times has a blog about it here.
So, as if life isn’t frustrating enough to get your 5 year old to do anything – now the 2 of them speak an incomprehensible dialect – which only accelerates my gray hair production. For example, the sentence spelled out phonetically (because there are no letters or vowels in this language) “Dada, Bach elefawa avware edalafaudi” translates to the title of Mo Willems famous children’s book – “Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.” The Ewoks in Star Wars were easier to understand. The word for “goodbye” is “nana.” The word for “please” is “nulaafada” – they even have numbers in Dochee. Count to three in Dochee – “Do, Ee, Ha.” They are so fluent in their dialect, they are able to go back and forth from English without a problem – as long as “we” don’t understand it. Honestly, as a parent, I didn’t see this one coming – but my understanding is it’s part of the normal development of our munchkins.
Related: Good Enough Mother Moment: I Really, REALLY Like My Kids!
Now I don’t speak Dochee – it is too hard to speak anyway – with its ever changing meanings and its spanglish type words – in fact, the only word that doesn’t change and always has the same meaning is the name of the language itself. I asked our son what does Dochee means – he looked at me and said with a straight face “Dochee means I love you.” How can you argue with an answer like that?
