It is worth noting a curious developmental grammatical point that Nora has, which is the use of “a” (pronounced as in the French à - which in itself is also interesting from a linguistics perspective) to replace many pronouns and the like. With, to, and, etc all become “a”.
Sensibly, I packed the nursery rhyme book with us as one of the few books we could take, and Nora creatively decided to ask for replacements instead of the word “pig” in “Tom, Tom the piper’s son”. These were requested in the way that she does when she can feel a sentence trying to get out but can’t get it out in the right way or fast enough, with breaths in the middle and very urgently (and with the word “Son” pronounced similarly to “Tom”) as in:
“Tom Tom a piper’s son a fish!”
Other substitutions included: cars, houses, sheep, man, lady, Daddy, cow.. and so on. Mostly with enormous grins, laughs and so on. When the tale of Tom got s bit boring, that rhyme could easily be replaced by “Ding dong bell”. This asked for as “Ding dong bell pussy in a well a car!”. IF you’ve ever read “Ding dong bell” you’ll know how weird and boring it is. However, if it stops tears of frustration on a car journey then *any* rhyme instantly becomes a best friend.
