Teaching kids English wrong

I remind myself of an old Steve Martin riff, off his ''Wild and Crazy Guy'' album. From memory, I think it's the ''language'' thing off track #2. Basically, he thinks it'd be fun to intentionally teach your kids English... wrong. That way, it'll be funny when they go to school on the first day and speak gibberish.

The reason I remind myself of that is that I've been teaching The Kid ''come here'' in an alien language: the words are ''kee-TAH'', accompanied by a ''come here'' geture with arms crossed in front of your body. I got this from the pretty good, but sadly under-rated movie ''The Last Starfighter'' (a cute, reasonably family-friendly movie), where the main character gets brought to an alien world and is guided through various hallways by an alien lady who keeps saying ''kee-TAH.''

As evidenced by her behavior in the shopping mall on Saturday, and at home on Sunday, when I call out her name and do the single-armed ''come here'' gesture, she doesn't come. But when I say ''kee-TAH'' and do the alien gesture, she does.


Hm!


Side note: I actually tend to use the Southeast[?] Asian ''come here'' gesture, which is with the palm down. Apparently, the palm-up gesture is considered rude in some cultures. I'm not sure of my specific motivation -- except maybe ''just to be different.'' But maybe it's a desire to be multicultural. Dunno.


--GG