I’m not trying to steal anyone’s thunder here, Word Nerd Wednesday is not going to become a regular thing (like it is over at Annette’s) In fact, I was going to post this on Monday but I got distracted by all the praise I was getting over at my brother’s blog and so I felt the need to direct your attention to the most important stuff.
But now I need your help. (In point of fact I don’t need the help of the word nerds but more specifically, that of the linguists, but “Linguists Start Your Engines” didn’t sound as good.) I got the Infantile Delinquent a Leapfrog Word Whammer for Christmas. It’s a pretty cool (and only somewhat annoying) toy and it’s already got him singing the alphabet which I think is great. But I noticed something the other day and I just know that one of you can tell me what the story is.
The Word Whammer comes with magnets of all 26
letters and each letter is one of four different colors. But I can’t figure out what the reasoning is behind which letters are which colors. (There’s a reason this is categorized under Feeding My OCD.) As you can see from the picture it’s not a straight red, then blue, then yellow, then green pattern. And I did catch that all of the vowels, and only the vowels, are red but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a rhyme or reason to the other colors. I’m thinking some kind of lingual v. glottal pronunciation thing. Voiced v. non-voiced? There has to be something, there just has to.
Why am I so sure? You ask.
Because this is not the only Leapfrog product that we own. About five years ago we bought the Princess a Leapfrog Desktop thingy (I believe that was the official name of the toy) and it also has magnetic letters. In the intervening years we’ve lost some of the letters but we still have some of them. Here’s a picture. 
Notice anything? Like the fact that the letters that are there are the same colors as the letters on my fridge.
So if nothing else the coloration is standard throughout Leapfrog products but WHY?
Help me out here, this is driving me crazy.
Also, why did they chose to go with the font with the little upwards thingy on the L? And why don’t the ends of the C turn inward like they should?
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PS. I wanted to throw in a disclaimer about how I only noticed the coloration because at one point the Word Whammer told my son to find the M and that the M was green and that got me thinking, but I’ve got to be honest with you, I noticed the lack of pattern in the coloration five years ago when we got the Desktop it was just that at the time I told myself that it was a fluke thing and all the letters were all different colors.
PPS Yes, I’m aware that I need to get out more.
