According to Cambridge academic, Professor Maria Nikolajeva, made-up words in books like Winnie the Pooh and Harry Potter ‘can help children learn English’.
The puns, linguistic inventions and fantastical names given to characters and places in fiction also allow children to understand the symbolic meaning of words.
“The creative employment of language in children’s books gives the child the power of expression. By challenging the arbitrary rules of language, especially written language, children learn to be critically-thinking individuals.”
She cites books like Winnie-the-Pooh, where much of the humour is based on the problems that Pooh has with words, (being a bear of very little brain). Whilst Pooh cannot spell – he writes “hunny” instead of “honey” and he thinks an “ambush” is a type of plant, the storiesshow the advantage gained by those who can distinguish between real and made-up terms, such as Christopher Robin who teases Pooh and Piglet by claiming he met a “Heffalump”. Owl, meanwhile, is treated with reverence because he can spell Tuesday.
In Harry Potter, the mastery of language is linked to magic, because characters can gain power over the world by learning spells from ancient grimoires.
Professor Nikolajeva says, “It is in this respect interesting to consider the character of Hermione, who gets all her knowledge from books and who is the most proficient of the three friends in magic incantations”.
In addition she says that the Dr Seuss books provide a “perfect training in verbal competence” through their tongue-twisting rhymes and made-up animals.
But she warns children’s authors of the power of words. Some children’s books risk looking down on their audience by pointing out the limits of their understanding.
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for instance, Alice is mocked for not understanding words such as “antipathy” and “longitude” but their meanings are never explained either to her or to the reader. Because of this Alice is “disempowered”, and she finds herself in a world where she cannot understand the logic of communication.
Source The Daily Telegraph