We've been calling our daughter Yakuza Baby (for latecomers to this column, she popped out during a Japanese gangster movie) for so long, I wouldn't have been surprised if her first words were, 'Mise mo nee yo, kono yarou?' (The Yakuza equivalent of 'Kuah si mi?' or 'Whatcha lookin' at?')

So I was somewhat surprised when it turned out to be 'Hawr.'

'Did Yakuza Baby just say 'Hello'?' I asked the Wife, eyebrows raised.

Hitherto, her communications had been limited to: crying, burping, smiling, cooing, an indignant 'Weh!' when she wants attention and a violent kicking of her left leg, which is her signal to us that she needs to poop or pee. (Figuring out what this motion meant has saved us a bundle in diapers.)

'Hawr', with a heavy 'h', was her first articulated utterance. I leaned over her bouncy chair and asked: 'What was that again?'

'Fah,' she replied, with a giggle. 'Hawr.'

' 'Hawr'? Do you mean 'Hello'?'

'Hawr,' she repeated. 'Glah grrgah hnnng.' (I may have gotten the spelling wrong.)

'She responded!' I exclaimed to the Wife. 'We're having a conversation.'

'Are you sure it's not just gas or cooing?' the Wife furrowed her brow, incredulous.

'No, this is the first time where there's been a back and forth exchange, involving distinct sounds and deliberate repetition!'

I turned back to Yakuza Baby. 'Chope, are these random sounds you're trying out, or are these actual words in, um, Bablish?'

'Fnngah,' she answered, helpfully.

Similar dialogues ensued several times a day over the next couple of weeks, each lasting around 10 minutes or so. She was especially engaged whenever I spoke Bablish back to her, instead of English. Her eyes would light up and she'd smile and laugh, as if she'd found a fellow baby to chat with. I really wondered how the conversations got translated inside her head. Probably something like:

Yakuza Baby: 'Hawr!' ('Greetings, O He-Whose-Nipples-Produce-No-Milk. Have you perchance come to wipe my buttocks?')

Me: 'Gnaaaah.' ('I exist only to serve you, your highness.')

Yakuza Baby: 'Mfoo.' ('Verily, make sure the wipes are warm, not like the last time.')

Frustratingly, each time we tried to record her babbling on video, she would fixate on the camera and either clam up or cry.

'Maybe we have to negotiate a fee with her agent first,' I ventured as I turned to Yakuza Baby. 'CAA or William Morris?'

'Ek-ek-ah,' said Yakuza Baby, as if in affirmation.

'You know,' I told the Wife one night after putting the babe to bed. 'If Yakuza Baby is building an actual vocabulary, such as it is, maybe we should think about being more consistent in how we communicate with her.'

Right now, we spoke to her in whatever took our fancy: Singlish, Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin and, of course, the high-pitched sing-song 'Aw, is iddle-widdle li'ul baby comfy-poos?'-style of baby talk. Often all in the same conversation.

'Can you not be so Singaporean?' the Wife shot back. 'She's, what, two months old? What's your hurry? You want to teach her the Queen's English so that she can address the UN General Assembly by five? Please, lah. Now it's more important to just enjoy the time with her, and for her to pick that up. She'll learn in her own good time.'

Still, I wondered what would happen if I raised the bar on our exchanges a little. The next morning, I sat opposite Yakuza Baby and went, in perfect BBC tones: 'So... where do you see yourself in five years?'

She gave me a quizzical look, but said nothing. Several monologues later she spat up milk and pooped in her diaper.

I guess the experiment was productive, but all it produced was a mess. 'Maybe that was a little contrived,' I conceded as I cleaned Yakuza Baby up. 'But don't you think we should nevertheless start communicating with her like an adult, in standard English?'

At this point, Yakuza Baby chimed in with a throaty 'Hawr!'

'Did I ask for your opinion?' I made a face, but realised that nothing I could say, in any adult language, could match that single syllable for eloquence or sheer delightfulness.

'Blorp,' I said to Yakuza Baby as I nuzzled her belly, and she concurred.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times.