Ary is a cheerful, engaging 4-and-a-half year old boy who was born in Kazakhstan and spent the first three years of his life in an orphanage.  He lives in America now with the single mother who adopted him just over a year ago.  Ary is an American nickname; in Kazakh, his name is Arystan, which literally means lion.  Everyone in Kazakhstan commented on that association so that Ary's mother bought him a t-shirt with a picture of a lion on it and felt that he identified strongly with the animal.  But when they returned to America and no one mentioned that Arystan meant lion, Ary didn't seem to mind.  In fact, he didn't seem to get the significance of the lion Halloween costume his mother bought him after he had been in America for six months.  He has come a long way in a year.

In the orphanage when he was 3-years-old, Ary expressed himself in single Kazakh words, mostly nouns and some verbs.  He knew the names of colors, animals, foods, body parts, clothing, toys, vehicles, playground equipment, other children in his group.  He knew the words for basic movements like sit, come on, eat, potty, and even dance.  His vocabulary was rudimentary and without apparent grammatical structure.  He pointed to things and uttered simple words to get his meaning across to his caregivers who were referred to as "auntie." 

Today Ary speaks in full English sentences.  He can carry on a conversation and express his wants and needs quite specifically.  Today he came in from playing outside and said to his mother:  "Mommy, the ice cream truck is coming.  I'm going have ice cream.  I need money.  I need 400 dollars."  His vocabulary consists of adjectives and adverbs as well as nouns and verbs, indefinite and personal pronouns (although he generally refers to everything in the masculine), prepositional phrases, conjunctions and articles (although he frequently skips them when he talks in a hurry).  

He can recognize and express emotions, which he could not do a year ago, and he engages in imaginative play, which was also not part of his language repertoire.  He talks about nature and his environment; he distinguishes between different kinds of animals within the same genus and can make appropriate animal sounds and gestures; he argues with his mother (who is a lawyer) and invites "uncles" on the phone to come over and play with him; he asks questions about how things work and where things came from and when they arrived in his world; he explains why he does not like a certain food ("too spicy"); he comforts his mother when she hurts herself ("I'll kiss your finger and make it better"); he chastises the cats when they jump up on the kitchen table; he pretends to make a cake out of a handful of leaves; he offers to help around the house ("I'm going to open the door for you").

Even with this amazing progress in one year, Ary lags behind his age peers in some language areas.  Compared to others in his day care group (3-6 year olds), his verbalization is often fragmented and simple in structure.  When he is tired, Ary forgets the names of things and speaks in short sentences.  Grammar gets mixed up and he says, "Are you got more strawberries?"  He confuses sensations (being thirsty and having to urinate) and has accidents; he says he's hungry and then throws up.  He says, "I'm going to take a walk my byself," and calls Donald Duck "Don Deluck." 

He seems to have no concept of outer space, though he does recognize the moon and stars and has flown in an airplane.  And he has no patience for hearing the text of storybooks but prefers to look at the pictures and make up his own stories.  He has no real sense of time and constantly confuses today, tomorrow, last week as well as morning, noon and evening (and lunch and dinner).  He has learned to count to 13 but then skips to 18.  He knows the names of the seasons and weather, but he cannot apply them appropriately to a conceptual time period.  His vocabulary is very concrete, descriptive, definite, grounded in his real world. 

Ary's pronunciation is generally understandable with a few problem areas.  He cannot say his "r" sound and so his name sounds like "A-yee" and umbrella comes out as "umbellalla."  Sometimes he confuses internal consonant sounds, such as stack and snack, or adds consonants that don't belong, such as gloob instead of glue.  The "wh" sound gets lost, so he says "every-air" instead of "everywhere" and "ale" instead of "whale."  The initial "th" sound becomes a "d" sound as in "dis" and "dat."  And he somehow adds a syllable before vowel sounds in certain words, such as "p-otty" and "Harry P-otter."

Ary's mother reports that he has chronic ear problems, so some language development may be hampered by a lack of hearing.  It is also likely that he still experiences cultural language confusion.  For example, in Kazakhstan they routinely overdress the children so it becomes difficult for them to read their own body temperature signals.  And the caregivers did not take the children outside during inclement weather, so while Ary may have seen snow and rain through windows, he did not experience weather personally.  When Ary's mother first began working with him in Kazakhstan, she concentrated on giving him the English words for basic needs (potty, sleep, play things, foods).  After returning to America, the international adoption clinic evaluated Ary and made him use language in order to get his needs met.  They advised Ary's mother to "make him talk"  instead of pointing to things.  Between day care and constant prompting from a verbal mother and caring friends, Ary learned how to communicate in the English language very quickly.