Local councils are being asked to do more following a damning new survey that claims children as young as four are regularly using adverbs in general conversation.
And far from having no understanding of their meaning or grammatical usage, experts now fear that children have a pretty good understanding of when to use them.
"It's shocking really," one parent, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "You talk to them like a child for years, and then - bang - they're using words even you can't understand."
Some claim they are picking up this language from older siblings, or from playground chatter, others fear that the internet is responsible for this rapid growth in descriptive vocabulary. Concerned parents are advised to install an adverb-blocker in their web browser.
Sally, 28, with her five year old daughter Emily, repeated the frustrations of many. "My Emily is an Angel, but I really get upset when she starts using words that are really beyond her years. For example, the other day she started asking about what would happen to her pet rabbit Fluffy since the whole universe was decaying into an orderless state due to entropy."
"Mummy, don't be upset.", Emily chimes in, " - and it's 'disordered state', not orderless,"
"Fortunately, I have still not caught her using adverbs. ", Sally continues, " I'm very careful to make sure she doesn't pick up anything from me - I'd never knowingly use one in front of her."
Comments