Complaints about baby toys: LeapFrog Learn and Groove Musical Table

My Favourite Little Person, who is now eight months old, has a LeapFrog Learn and Groove Musical Table, which you can see in action here. (I don't know the people behind the video, I just googled it up.)

It's enormous fun and I had a great time sitting down and figuring out what all the things do. I can see it having significant longevity as a baby toy, and later on being reappropriated as the control panel of a cardboard box spaceship or something. However, there are two points that I think would be detrimental if this toy does work as a language acquisition tool like it's supposed to.

1. Use of vocal scat. When the toy is set to vocabulary (by turning the pages of the book in the middle), it says the word that corresponds with the action you're doing. For example, if you open the door it says "open". If you close the door it says "close". When you press the green button it says "green". When you press the red button it says "red". When the toy is set to music, each manipulable part of the table plays a little tune, with a reasonable electronic approximation of a different instrument for each one.

Unfortunately, one of the instruments they chose is vocal scat. You can see this at about 1:50 in the video linked above. When the door is opened, the toy sings "BOPbadoobadooba". The problem is that "BOPbadoobadooba" is a sequence of phonemes, just like words are. How is the baby supposed to conclude that "open" means "open" but "BOPbadoobadooba" doesn't mean "open" and is just nonsense? I'm sure the manufacturers of the toy will point out that the scat only happens on the music setting, not on the vocabulary setting, but I doubt a baby would understand that. (Can they even process they idea of music and language as two discrete entities?) After all, if babies acquired vocabulary only when we wanted them to, we wouldn't have to worry about swearing in front of them. If this toy does in fact help language acquisition like it's intended to, are we going to have a generation of children who think that "BOPbadoobadooba" is a synonym for "open"?

2. French word order. In the Canadian version of this toy (which is not the same version shown in the video), you can switch it between English and French. When it's set on French, the vocabulary function says the French equivalents of the English words used in the English vocabulary function. The problem is with the coloured shapes. When you press each coloured shape, the toy tells you both the colour and the shape (you can see this at about 1:06 in the video linked above). For example, when you press the green circle, it says "Green! Circle!"

The problem is that, in French, it says the French equivalents of the exact same words in the exact same order. In other words, when the English says "Green! Circle!", the French says "Vert! Cercle!" However, as we learned in our very first year of elementary school French class, French colour adjectives go after the noun, so the correct word order is "cercle vert".

The manufacturers would probably point out that the words aren't intended to form a phrase, and it is in fact clear from the intonation that it's saying "Vert! Cercle!", not "vert cercle". However, I question whether a baby could grasp this nuance, especially since adults tend to use funny intonation when talking to babies. Regardless, using correct word order would add value. (It's like if the English said "Circle! Green!" You'd probably be thinking "How hard would it have been to just switch the order?")

It's also possible that they chose this order to provide word-by-word French translation for Anglophone children. They might be thinking of an Anglophone child switching between the languages and learning that "green" = "vert" and "circle" = "cercle". However, this is exclusionary towards Francophone children, because they don't get to hear their language in its natural state (and, again, if this toy actually works as a language acquisition tool, it might be detrimental). French isn't an enrichment opportunity for Anglophones. It's a living language that millions of Canadians speak in the home, at work, and in everyday life, and Leapfrog is doing them a disservice by not representing it as such.