Six Words Are All You Need
Everyone has a six-word story, or so Smith notes (and here’s a video—some pictures must only be worth six words). Indeed: Sometimes (a lot of times) in our house, a little goes a long way. My son Charlie can talk, mostly in short phrases or single words and six words at one time from him is quite a lot.
Blue ocean, Chinese food, I know.
It’s telegraphic speech, in which a single word is connected, by fibers invisible and strong as the threads of a spider’s web, to a full cosmos of meanings. All in just six words.
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POSTED IN: Books, Language, Literature
7 opinions for Six Words Are All You Need
Emily
Jan 19, 2008 at 10:38 am
I cannot even put on a number on how many times I’ve described TH’s speech as “telegraphic.” That was until recently. And it’s still like that. These days, I think of it more as a fritzy FM radio station. In fact, I was going to do a post about that because it’s such a good description of so much of what he does–school, talking, dressing… ;)
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 19, 2008 at 10:52 am
It makes me reflect on how few words it takes to say the essentials!
Robin H. Morris
Jan 19, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Only five
Years ago, our son’s noises with obsessive and repetitive language was very distressing. One day he must of instinctively known just how upset I was….”no noises, go library Mommy?”
5 words said it all
xR
Daisy
Jan 19, 2008 at 1:16 pm
It’s rather poetic, like Haiku, where every word or syllable has value. in the six traits writing model, this is the ultimate in Word Choice.
S.L.
Jan 19, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Sometimes the things said with the fewest words make the greatest impact. So long as our ears (and minds!) are open! Lovely post, smiling here thinking of your son’s messages. Thanks for sharing the links too. Great stuff.
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Jan 19, 2008 at 9:33 pm
[…] a little less than six words (and sometimes many more, and whether or not your lips are moving) can get the message across. […]
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Jan 20, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[…] know if he’ll still like the noodles—-something like that. But being a boy of few words, it’s not so easy to talk about something that is not “black and white” and that […]
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